One question I’ve heard echoed several times since the announcement of the bailout plan is, “Why bail out the rich when we refuse to bail out the poor?” Why is the government rushing to help executives and not former homeowners? (Sure, there was that wishy-washy plan a few months ago, but that was nothing, in terms of speed and magnitude, compared to this.) Why the double standard? Why the blatant hypocrisy?
One argument has to do with trickle-down theories and chain reactions: if large companies like Fannie Mae or AIG go under, the effects will ripple throughout the entire economy. Better to save their asses and protect our own jobs. And while there are flaws in that logic, it’s an argument worth considering.
That doesn’t explain people’s attitudes toward the bailout, though.
When I explain how college administrations exploit me and my colleagues, the number one comment I get from conservatives is that I’m “whining.” I’m “complaining.” I should suck it up, accept what I’m worth, or get another job if I’m so unhappy. If the “market” mows me over? If I fall ill while underinsured? I deserve it! Maybe I’ll die! Good riddance! (Anyone who sees this paragraph as more whining is free to turn off their computer and go for a walk; don’t bother commenting, because it won’t appear.) I don’t take the attacks personally, though, because that type of rhetoric is par for the course. When a lefty type – or, even worse, a poor or working-class lefty type – asks for help, spit froths and teeth gnash. People get angry at that shit. They get dramatic. You’d think they were being asked to kill their pets or something. It’s almost as if – bear with me here, because I know this is wild – people take pleasure in punishing victims. Yet, throughout this new crisis, I’ve noticed a curious dearth of ad hominem attacks leveled at CEOs. Sure, plenty of conservatives are angry, but the vitriol I’ve seen is nothing compared to the vicious attacks routinely leveled at the poor and working class.
You’re probably expecting me to spend the next two thirds of this blog post complaining about what rotten people conservatives are. Actually, I’d like to talk about my fellow leftists. I’ve found myself thinking, over the past few days, about the ways people with class privilege approach the homeless. I know many people who like to offer homeless people food – bread, apples, lunch meat, whatever. Sometimes they carry it around with them in case they encounter someone begging; other times, they make a field trip out of it, hitting a grocery store and then taking the goods around a neighborhood. On the surface, this seems pretty noble – after all, those people need food, right? Fresh fruit! Protein! Good stuff! Surely they’ll appreciate it and eat it up and we’ll have done a good deed.
Except… well, first off, I’ve never personally witnessed someone doing this. I always encounter it in the form of a brief anecdote: this one thing that they tried this one time. And the punch line’s always the same. “I offered him a perfectly good nutritious apple,” the progressive says with a sad shake of the head, “…and he didn’t even want it!”
(The point being that all the guy really wanted was money for heroin and booze, and oh why should we even try to help these people when they’re too lazy to help themselves well I wash my hands of the whole thing!)
I hear the same hopeless condescension in discussions on the myriad addictions of the homeless. Why should I give him change when he’ll just spend it on drugs? Why should I help him when he’s spending his money on liquor? Or alternately: I only give money to people who are honest – the ones who just admit that they’re going to spend it on drugs and liquor!
If you’ll allow me a digression, let me explain why this reasoning doesn’t work. First off, the homeless do often have access to food; they’re not necessarily relying on your Red Delicious to stay alive. Soup kitchens, shelters, and nonprofit organizations work to provide the homeless with basic sustenance. Putting aside, for now, the question of drugs and alcohol, it’s actually a little absurd to decide that the only thing the homeless should ever desire from passersby is food or money for food. The average American spends around 10% of their income on food; why should the homeless spend 100%? If a person who has lost their apartment wants to purchase, say, a cup of coffee, why do we obsess over denying them that right? (There’s also the possibility that the guy to whom you’re offering food simply doesn’t like what you’re trying to give him. Perhaps he’d rather have the money to choose his own food. You could argue that he should just choke it down – but if you’re feeling so generous, why not give him the money instead?)
When you factor in people’s immediate assumption that if the homeless are not buying food, they’re obviously buying drugs, the attitude towards giving becomes even more condescending. Behind the assumption that the homeless are buying intoxicants lies the assumption that the homeless are uniformly addicted to intoxicants: that every homeless woman who buys weed is also a heroin addict, that every homeless man who buys beer is an alcoholic. Now, it’s true that a disproportionate number of homeless people suffer from addiction, and that addiction (in conjunction with health issues, housing costs, and other factors) is a leading cause of homelessness. But notice how we skip straight to the assumption that every homeless person we see, no matter how lucid they seem, is an addict? Do we check for slurred speech or needle tracks before we assume that they’ll “just spend it on drugs?” No. Often, we shake our heads at their alcohol use on our way to the bar. We deny them money on the off chance that they’ll buy something we don’t want them to buy, and then proceed to pay our government officials’ salaries. The assumption that the homeless must be kept away from harmful substances at all costs (to them, not us) is, when you think about it, an astoundingly patronizing double standard. We can be trusted to drink and smoke in moderation. They can’t.
So where am I going with this? Like I said, what I want to call attention to is the attitude that comes with giving. Because whenever I hear a leftist with privilege talking about that one time they tried to give someone a loaf of bread, I always detect a note of satisfaction in their voice. If this were truly a problem for people – if people with homes truly cared about the homeless and wanted to help them – we would scramble for other ways to accomplish that. We would engage with them, let them tell us what they need. We would give our money to shelters and programs. We would work harder to create safety nets. But we don’t. The people who moan about the futility of giving don’t really want to give. Instead, they go through the motions so they can get to that punch line: “There’s no point in trying, because they’re lazy and weak and thus belong where they are.”
Why are we amenable to bailing out the rich, but not the poor? It’s not entirely about economics. It’s not even entirely about stinginess or apathy. It’s about power. When I have money and you don’t, I’m more powerful than you are. And when I have a choice to make – dissolving that power by giving you what you need, or holding onto that power by putting you in your place – it’s much more thrilling to peck my way up to a higher spot in the order. That’s why it’s so satisfying, for so many liberal-minded people, to sigh over the incompetency of those who seem dependent on our kindness. The categories “we” and “they” solidify. “We” would never end up in that position, because “we” are better and smarter. The gap between liberal and conservative suddenly shrinks to nothing.
To many middle- and upper-class people across the political spectrum, the executives at Fanny Mae and AIG look much more familiar than the woman pushing a shopping cart down 5th street – or the family who took out a subprime loan. And even when those execs are forced to sell their private jets, we know they’ve still got power, and that thrill of subjugation is absent. The line between “we” and “they” is permeable, as the American Dream tells us it should be. Sure, some of us feel the vindictive pleasure of seeing the mighty brought down low – but that’s not the same as wagging our finger, smugly keeping our handful of change, and keeping our privilege (to drink without being judged, to spend our income how we please) in place. It’s hard to get angry when we can’t be patronizing, too. When the person in need is at or above our level, we choose to give, even if reluctantly. If that person is below us, we choose – gleefully – to withhold.
Notice how I can’t help but describe it in terms of up and down? Notice how much we cling to this hierarchy – even when we tell ourselves we’re trying to level it?
And notice how I’m the twenty gazillionth person to say this, and nothing whatsoever has changed?
(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot)
I haven’t read anyone who wants to bail out the rich. I’ve read lots of ideas on how to bail out the institutions that they’ve run and benefited from. I’ve seen lots of discussion on how to do this and still punish the asshats that fucked it all up in the first place and some discussion about how punishing the managers of the banks isn’t worth destroying the fractional banking system.
I agree with the need to save the banking system by the way. Very few companies have enough cash on hand to make due without debt. I REALLY don’t like the proposed plan though.
I used to carry around cans of food to give to homeless people. I never had anybody turn it down. But I quit doing it for a few reasons. One is that walking around with a backpack full of canned food is heavy and annoying. The other is that I started to wonder why I knew their needs better than they did. So I had some dollar bills and would give those out. Which is also not any kind of useful solution. If I give somebody a dollar, what can they get for that? These folks need real structural change and assistance from some sort of governmental program. Why do I pay taxes if it’s not feed, clothe and house people in need?
I agree to a point.
No one thinks that bailing out the banks with lots of our money is a good idea.
However, there IS a lot of shadenfreude going around especially amongst middle class renters who want to snap up the forclosed houses. “Those people deserve it!” I feel it too. All those foreclosures would make housing a bit cheaper, and I could buy a little sooner, and have my 20% down.
Of course as a well-off renter with a solid job and charmed life (and a sig other with same) I also feel that anyone who buys with less than 10% down or gets an ARM deserves what they get. Terrible, isn’t it?
The first thing I try to think is “they are probably looking for a new job, took a temp job at McDonald’s, work triple shifts and still don’t make enough”, to try and make a “deserving” poorer person. And then my mind goes back to “but they could try harder to apply for other jobs”.
And I know perfectly well that I can only spend about 20 hours/week trying to get jobs before I go nuts. And that working more than 8 hours makes my work 10 times worse. But, you know, they’re poor so they can “try harder”. :(
Conceptually I know the difference between me and homeless/foreclosure people is LUCK.
luck to have parents who encouraged me
luck to be born white (lots of stuff comes with this)
luck to have a very high IQ, enabling me to have a reasonably secure job
luck to have good health and good health insurance through my company
luck to have found a similar sig other, so both of us would have to lose our jobs to be in any trouble
luck to have parents that I could move back in with
luck to be educated on financial stuff
If you take away any 3 of these things, I’d probably be pretty likely to have a house underwater by now, and I might be missing payments. I know the difference is JUST luck, and I STILL feel like people deserve the foreclosures they get.
Human nature? What a lousy species.
That’s because there’s no one delivering self-righteous lectures on how bankers are oppressed and how immoral we are for not voting to give them more of the money we’ve earned. Support for the bailout takes the form of “If we don’t do this, economic caatastrophe will result,” not “You’re a bad person if you don’t support this.” It’s the moralizing that provokes the intense backlash.
But if you want anti-banker vitriol from a libertarian, check out Captain Capitalism.
I think another reason why people are reluctant to help the homeless is that it seems so hard. The goal of helping the homeless, we feel, should be to get them back on their feet, living indoors, working at a steady job, and so on. I see a homeless person on the street and I have absolutely no clue how to help them get from here to there (always assuming that this is what they really want/need, and I don’t even know that), and, yeah, I could give them a buck or two, or even all the money in my wallet, and would that really help? And I do read the advice not to give money because they may indeed spend it getting drunk/high, and that will make them twice as vulnerable to exposure, mugging, etc., so it’s not clear that that’s really helpful either. And I guess there is a certain condescension there, thinking that some “expert” knows better than homeless people whether they need money or not. But, bottom line, I do want to help in some meaningful way, I just don’t know how best to do it (other than by contributing to charities that help the homeless, which I do).
(A quick plug btw, speaking of charities: if you live in the Boston area and you knit or crochet, you might be interested in the second annual Pine Street Inn Knit-a-thon on November 9. Follow the link for more info.)
As for the Wall Street bailout, of course I don’t want to rescue bankers who made more money in a day than I do in a year from the consequences of their bad decisions. On a macroeconomic level, though, it seems likely that if the credit markets totally seize up and/or the whole financial system collapses because all of these banks have lent each other money on the strengh of “assets” that may or may not be worth anything, there will be a major depression and guess who will suffer most? Poor people, of course. It is ever thus, and nobody knows how to fix that either.
I have never offered a homeless person food, though once I was in a church youth group that was approached by someone who needed food and the youth group leaders went to the store to buy some food. However, I was a little thrown by this, “First off, the homeless do often have access to food; they’re not necessarily relying on your Red Delicious to stay alive. Soup kitchens, shelters, and nonprofit organizations work to provide the homeless with basic sustenance.” I have read some homeless person blogs and some formerly homeless person blogs, and overwhelmingly, the authors did not (or do not) rely on shelters for food, because there are all sorts of rules with homeless shelters- no sex, for one, and often they have to be there by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, which makes it hard to hold a job (which several did during their period of homelessness). Of course, perhaps there was some privilege there, because I also don’t recall many of them panhandling, so they had other means of caring for themselves. Still, I don’t think the assumption that homeless people might want some food is entirely off base.
In reading the blogs, I can think of a few things that homeless people might need to buy: a PO box (to apply to jobs with, to get a cell phone bill), dry cleaning (you can keep your shirts there for almost a month before picking them up, thus not requiring you to lug them around), car related items (one author said the single most important thing for a homeless person to have is a car, for sleeping in), to pay off the tickets one might get for panhandling (what an awesome law).
I rarely gave to panhandlers back when I lived in a big city where they were a common sight. I am never sure if I should feel guilty about that.
I agree that any personal attacks on conservatives for not supporting social programs is unwarranted. I support many of these programs (but not others) because, while they are imperfect, bottom up is how real prosperity is built, and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of artificial stimulation to get the cycle going; the money that a poor person receives is almost certainly going to be spent immediately, leading to multiplier effects. In this respect, a welfare check to a poor person is analogous to using a pre-hashed line at a dinner party while making it look spontaneous. Sure, it’s artificial, but it provides an impetus for the real process, with the good outweighing the bad. Without tooting my own horn too much, this is the way we should talk about welfare policy, rather than dramatizing it into a moral struggle between good and bad.
However, the moralizing goes both ways. I’ve heard right-libertarians portray modern politics as a dramatic moral struggle, with some rich guy playing the tragic hero and the peaceful, democratic government playing the fucking Galactic Empire. We’ve all seen them try and paint millionaires as victims either, despite that being stupid and ridiculous. Libertarianism might get more credit and have more of a voice than it otherwise does if it didn’t turn so many way with this sort of exhibitionism.
Furthermore, when some slightly left-centre wonkhead like Kerry or Gore dispassionately suggests an added program here and there, nowhere do I see anyone praising the civility and tenor – rather, it’s the same pile-on as usual, except even more gleeful. That suggests to me that the problem is with the content, not the tone, of the argument.
No, I agree with TGD’s point, and I note that you didn’t dispute it. We’re not saying that free marketers hate alms to the poor while sending muffin baskets to corporate welfare offices. No, you guys oppose both, that much is obvious, but what is just as obvious is that you guys don’t oppose both equally, or with the same amount of vigour.
You’re obviously talking to the wrong conservatives. I’m an active Farker, which has a strong “independant” (read: agnostic or minimally-religious conservative) contingent, and they’re frothing at the mouth over these bail-outs. When it was announced that a lot of severance/retirement packages were being cancelled for bailed-out CEOs, the reaction was something like “it seems wrong to break that contract, but screw it, YES!”. The opinion there is split between “let ’em crash” or the “Chinese” approach (as they call it):
1) Nationalize the industry
2) Summarily execute every person involved
3) Re-privatize the industry
What you seem to be saying is that a gift of money to a homeless person cannot have strings attached — once you give your dollar or dime, it is no longer your business where it goes. You are now out of the decision tree that properly belongs to the money’s recipient, end of story.
I agree with you completely, but that still does not make me want to subsidize someone else’s cup of coffee. I’d rather pay taxes and support legislation and NGOs that will raise minimum wages and provide jobs, build affordable, safe housing, create daycare centers, and fund public transportation.
The bottom line is that we give a lot of lip service about caring for those that live in poverty but in actuality we do not. When you can have a government official calling for the sterilizations of the poor and denouncing so-called illegal aliens without getting the national trouncing that he deserves what does it say but that we are currently experiencing anomie?
We blame the individual rather than the system itself that impoverishes. Capitalism is all about the cult of I and not about increasing social cohesion. We bail out the rich even though it is against our class interest to do so because we covet their wealth. Until we can care about whether the woman across town has enough to eat we will continue to make decisions that damage the collective.
Maybe I am, and that if I weren’t I’d be a happier, more well-adjusted individual.
Agreed, Jenny. I greatly prefer directed, in kind transfers – such as specific vouchers for food or secondary training – than a straight cash dole, which suffers accountability issues.
The whole “sterilizing the poor” thing is a disgusting idea, but claiming that the idea is stemming from Eugenics or white racism is deliberately obtuse. The reasoning is obvious – when a person is on public assistance, they are consuming the resources of other citizens without giving anything back, and we, as a society, have decided that’s a good idea because it’s humane and decent.
But deliberately increasing that burden is an incredibly selfish thing to do. Deciding to have a child that you can’t support and expecting others to care for that child is unfair to your child and to your fellow citizens. You’re committing an act that deliberately takes from many innocent people based on your own desires.
To me, it’s morally equivalent to being a deadbeat dad.
Now, should it be illegal? Of course not – anything to do with pregnancy is far too nasty a slippery slope, and the government should keep out. And similarly, the idea of encouraging sterilization is also disgusting – the government should not be in the business of pushing people around on birth control.
These crazy assignments of hateful motives are no better than MRAs who assume all feminists hate men or fundamentalists who assume that sex-ed classes are designed to get preschoolers into gay orgies.
I agree with those who say our money should go to setting up structural support to enable homeless people to have the necessities of life, rather than in the form of some dollars doled out at random with no idea of where they go. Certainly not every homeless person will use the money you give him to feed an addiction, but there’s no good way of knowing which is which. I’d rather pay more money overall for the cost of administering a system that ensures the money goes to food, shelter, clothing, hygiene, medication, therapy and job training.
As for a lack of outrage toward CEOs, I really don’t know what TGD has been reading. One of the more bizarre spectacles of the whole crisis has been John McCain’s mad populism, in which shareholders should have binding votes on how to use the corporation’s money (thus effectively negating the purpose of a board of directors, as well as the whole ownership-decisionmaking split that’s fundamental to corporate law), and anyone who is willing to take on the 18-hour a day job of pulling these companies back from the brink in the next year shouldn’t get paid more than a government salary.
I am all for the Dodd plan, which will claw-back bonuses paid to the executives who screwed up the companies in the first place, but a set dollar limit on CEO pay for the future execs who are not to blame is ridiculous.
The whole “sterilizing the poor” thing is a disgusting idea, but claiming that the idea is stemming from Eugenics or white racism is deliberately obtuse.
Um, this is definitely the historical basis. See, e.g., Buck v. Bell, in which Holmes wrote for the Supreme Court that “three generations of idiots” — i.e. people whom he deemed insufficiently capable of self-support and proper behavior — “is enough.”
If you object to paying more money out to a family that has just added a new member, there are alternatives to sterilization, which is rather permanent and says, “This person should not breed, ever, no matter what the change in circumstances.”
@PG
We are talking about Labruzzo, not Holmes. Doubtless there are many who support such a plan because of that belief… but it’s still an unfair prejudice to automatically ascribe that motive. It’s the same as “all right-to-lifers hate and want to control women” – yes, there are many that are nasty fundamentalists who think that birth control, including abortion, is evil because women should be having babies for their husbands instead of living free lives, but there are many that are genuinely concerned that abortion might be killing an innocent human being. I disagree on the human being part, but I don’t assume that their motives are evil.
“Doubtless there are many who support such a plan because of that belief… but it’s still an unfair prejudice to automatically ascribe that motive.”
Then please explain why the support is for a permanent measure like sterilization rather than for a temporary one like an IUD.
…
You may be right on that one. I just figured he was a conservative – they’re not too big on subtlety or nuance, and so suggested the most brute-force approach.
Hell, explain why the support isn’t for free contraception access & information in general?
Pingback: Shae’s Place » Blog Archive » Judging the Homeless: A Response
Oh, I agree with Jenny so much:
“What you seem to be saying is that a gift of money to a homeless person cannot have strings attached — once you give your dollar or dime, it is no longer your business where it goes. You are now out of the decision tree that properly belongs to the money’s recipient, end of story.”
SO much. Give or don’t give, but don’t act like it gives you control, or right to comment on how someone else lives their life. (That said, I generally don’t give, largely because I’m a small single woman in a gigantic city and I don’t like to be remembered. That sounds paranoid, but I’ve been followed and harassed enough times that I don’t care).
That said, I think we should organize the corporate bailouts in the same way uber-libertarians want to handle social welfare– private citizens can choose to help out, if they want to, from the goodness of their hearts. Let the free market provide!
Being poor, I do get a shivery “There but for the grace of God”, when we drive past a cardboard sign being held up at the exit ramp by someone with battered clothing and backpack, especially if it is a day where it isn’t too cold to be out but it’s too cold to enjoy being out.
On the other hand.
My husband works as an emergency roadside assistance tech. If, in a certain large midwestern city, you call a certain famous company to get your car jumpstarted or your tire changed or a tow, he’s the guy who comes with tow truck. He came home last week with an interesting story that left us both shaking our heads.
You see, he gets around the metropolitan area a lot. One exit in particular which serves a chunk of the downtown is one he goes by a lot. And every day, sometimes two or three times a day for several months, there’s This Dude standing at the top of the ramp, where drivers have to stop for the light, with a cardboard sign. So he got to know his face, you know.
One day, he’s called to pick up a car in a parking lot and tow it to someone’s home. It was a large SUV of one of the more expensive lines, and he was sighing as he drove to the parking lot because those take a towing technique that involves more work, and if they have custom rims he can’t tow them at all and will have to send for a flatbed truck. Imagine his surprise when the club member and her husband This Dude get into his truck to tow their SUV to their nice house in the suburbs. They both had signs and backpacks and elderly clothes, and tipped him twenty dollars from full wallets. The man quite readily admitted that he’d started begging when he’d hurt his shoulder and had to be off work for a while….but discovered that begging paid more than the job he had. Sure, he had to stand around in the cold, but he had to do that on the job he had had anyway, and on this there was no one telling him when to take his lunch or his coffee breaks, and with both he and his wife on it, they were doing very nicely.
We both just shook our heads when he related the story. I guess there’s a hustler in every crowd. It doesn’t make me less likely to give a dollar to a homeless person, when I’ve got one, but I’m way more likely to offer to buy him a cup of coffee. I feel rather uneasy about subsidizing someone else’s new SUV when I am donating plasma and saving up money so that I can go to the doctor about that weird spot on my hand. Up and down the social ladder.
The whole “sterilizing the poor” thing is a disgusting idea, but claiming that the idea is stemming from Eugenics or white racism is deliberately obtuse.
Really who historically have been sterilized in large numbers by the government??? WOC. That’s right up until the 1970’s the government was still actively engaged in sterilizing native and black women. So when I see a white government official speaking about sterilizations compounded with the fact that this is still a white supremacist state I think it is more than fair to judge them on its past and present actions.
He further went on to use Katrina as an example of people who needed to sterilized..Ummm did I miss something, weren’t the victims of hurricane Katrina mostly black? Yeah no racism at all…Now whistle Dixie everyone, and pretend you believe the lies.
When I lived in the big city I only remember giving away food once, and that was on the way home from a pizza place and when asked for money I said nope, I didn’t have any, but they could have the rest of my pizza, which they seemed fairly enthusiastic about. But I’m a small woman who keeps my wallet pretty far buried in my purse, so normally I would just offer a cigarette, and I don’t think I was ever turned down. Heh, do I get credit for that?
luck to have parents who encouraged me
luck to be born white (lots of stuff comes with this)
luck to have a very high IQ, enabling me to have a reasonably secure job
luck to have good health and good health insurance through my company
luck to have found a similar sig other, so both of us would have to lose our jobs to be in any trouble
luck to have parents that I could move back in with
luck to be educated on financial stuff
I disagree with your assessment. You have these because of choices, not luck. If you didn’t have them, it would also be because of choices, if not yours then someone else’s. You make our fortunes sound like they depend upon a coin toss in heaven.
Geez. I’d prefer it if it did.
Eugenics is a hateful, nasty business, but for a brief window in the early 20th century, it really was in scientific vogue. So I could see how someone who merely wanted to sound educated and was a little elitist could easily be suckered in. Well, to that guy, you have our historical pardon. (You didn’t do any sterilizations yourself, though, right?)
On the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone seriously advocating forced sterilization as the quid pro quo for a $300 monthly check unless they had a serious, debilitating personality disorder.
You’re saying it’s not a matter of luck if you’re born white, or if you have parents? What.
“I disagree with your assessment. You have these because of choices, not luck. If you didn’t have them, it would also be because of choices, if not yours then someone else’s. You make our fortunes sound like they depend upon a coin toss in heaven.”
Which of those things did I choose?
The IQ?
The whiteness?
Parents who could encourage me?
Accepting my job application?
Parents with enough money to support another adult if I lose my job?
How the heck did I choose those things? Sure I chose the other two, more or less, but those are probably a result of my white middle-classness growing up. Which, btw, I didn’t choose. Most things in my life I probably owe to my parents’ choices, which means I’m very lucky indeed.
Really who historically have been sterilized in large numbers by the government?? WOC
What would those large numbers be? How many people actually were sterilized by various governments (I presume these would be state government, not the Federal government), and what was the racial breakdown?
I also have no idea what people have been reading that would lead them to believe that the CEO’s, etc. in charge of these institutions shouldn’t be held responsible for what’s been going on. Although I’m not so sure I go along with voiding these contracts; I think I’d prefer hauling them into court on fraud charges and them fining them triple damages. Don’t just take their last contract. Take everything.
Ron, the tone you’re using is one of interrogation. (Even if you didn’t intend it that way, that’s how it reads to me.) Given the subject, I think it would lead to a more productive conversation if you had instead used a tone that implied a more open mind. E.g., “I didn’t know about that. Can you suggest a link where I could read some historic data about sterilization of WOC?”
I’m not saying you broke any rules or anything; nor am I saying there’s anything wrong, in a forum like “Alas,” with asking where people’s factual claims come from.
It’s just that… There’s a long history of people of color having legitimate reports of racism dismissed by skeptical white people. It wouldn’t hurt white people to keep that in mind when we find ourselves in these discussions.
30% of Native American women of child-bearing age had been sterilized (often without consent, with illegally obtained consent, or with consent obtained by fraud) as of 1975. Often these women were given medically inappropriate full hysterectomies. Doctors who performed the sterilizations appear to have had two main motivations: 1) they thought they were doing a good thing, because “those people” would just have too many kids they couldn’t raise, 2) they were new doctors who needed experience with certain procedures before they could get better jobs (hence the focus on medically inappropriate full hysterectomies).
“I also feel that anyone who buys with less than 10% down or gets an ARM deserves what they get.”
Here’s the thing about those mortgages. The payments were, for many people, cheaper than paying rent on a two bedroom apartment in a rundown neighborhood. If you could get the seller to pay the down payment and the closing costs, you could virtually move in for free. Also, you could use the purchase to get out of a lease and get back your deposit. Further, when you transferred your utilities, you often got that deposit back as well since you were now a homeowner.
This was no secret. Telemarketers and junk mail from realtors detailed everything you needed to do. For months, my local newspaper ran columns of such tips every week in the real estate section. “$1000 cash in the bank” was one of the many pitches, and my particular circumstances netted me $3500.
So, did poor people deserve what they got, ahem, I should say what WE got? Well, look at what we DID get. Immediate cash in the bank, years of living in a large house for less than what we would have paid anyway for rent, a number of credit lines that were multiples of my annual income, and most of all, dignity for my son in that his family owned a house. In my case, as well, owning that house allowed me to finally get a BS degree at a major name college.
What did I lose in the ensuing bankruptcy and foreclosure (due to medical reasons)? Not much — the equity in the house was far less than I would have paid in rent. The few other big ticket items taken were paid with credit cards that I had defaulted months before, and losing the car was more a blessing than a curse.
All things considered, I ain’t complainin’.
Hm. I didn’t mean to be accusatory. I am curious. I’m a quantitative kind of guy, and when I see a phrase like “large numbers” I want a little more definition.
One such case is too much, mind you.
Mandolin:
Jesus!
BTW, I can add something to that bit about full hysterectomies. My boss back when I was a grad student and pizza delivery man was a young Italian woman. One day after having had pains in her back for some time she went to a doctor. “You’ve got a ‘tipped uterus’, you need a hysterectomy.” She came to me very upset that night. “Professor …” and she told me the story. I told her to get a second opinion. A few days later she came back. “Professor, the doctor said I have ‘female troubles’ and I need a hysterectomy.” At this point I threw the bullshit flag and told her “Hold off, let me get you someone to talk to.” I went to grad school at a medical school. I marched into the Dean of Medicine’s office, told him the story, and asked him for the name of someone she could trust. He made a phone call and gave me a name. The end of the story is that 4 weeks later she brought a jar into work containing 3 gall stones.
Hysterectomies were at one point (and may still be) the most commonly performed unnecessary operation in America. Quick work and quick money. There was a 60 Minutes episode on it. So these women may have been subjected to more than one kind of exploitation.
So jed; any regrets that I have to pay to make up for your defaults?
According to Virginia’s General Assembly, approximately 8000 Virginians and over 60,000 Americans were sterilized under eugenics laws after the Buck v. Bell decision said that states constitutionally were permitted to do this. California did the largest number of eugenic sterilizations, roughly a third of the total. Thousands more (mostly men) were sterilized while in prison (which didn’t require a finding of “feeble-mindedness” and was used more as a punishment), although this practice was much reduced by the 1942 Skinner v. Oklahoma decision that said if there was to be sterilization for criminals, it had to be done to white-collar criminals as well.
I don’t know what the racial breakdown was in the U.S. as a whole. It’s complicated because some sterilizations were carried out with the victim’s knowledge (though not consent), e.g. in mental hospitals, prisons and other state institutions where the government had constant control over the victim. In contrast, many other sterilizations were carried out on women without their knowledge when they came to the hospital to give birth or with other medical conditions. The hospital sterilizations were very racially biased against Native Americans, African Americans and Latinas, but I’m not sure if the state institutional ones were.
While these were state laws, the federal government was not entirely innocent. Beyond the Supreme Court’s sanction for eugenic sterilization, the class-action suit Madrigal v. Quilligan revealed that tubal ligations on working-class Mexican women were financed by federal agencies that began to disperse funds in conjunction with the family planning initiatives of the War on Poverty.
Why should Jed have regrets, Ron? Maintaining the integrity of the US economy is not his responsibility. Sure, his default contributed to the current situation, but so did my recent decision to cash out a money market account. Should I have regrets too? How are the two situations different?
He lived up to his obligation to either pay or give back the house (by selecting the latter option); it’s not his fault that the banks misjudged the value of his asset or his likelihood of defaulting. Defaulting on a secured loan isn’t a moral failing; it’s a business decision.
Maintaining the integrity of the US economy is not his responsibility.
Maintaining the integrity of his own personal economy is. The U.S. economy is not something independent of all of us. We are all a part of it.
He lived up to his obligation to either pay or give back the house (by selecting the latter option); it’s not his fault that the banks misjudged the value of his asset or his likelihood of defaulting.
Ah, but what did HE know about his likelihood of defaulting?
Defaulting on a secured loan isn’t a moral failing; it’s a business decision.
The fact that something is legal doesn’t make it moral. Isn’t it the left that complains about legislating morality? Borrowing money you know you can’t pay back (or have no reasonable expectation that you can pay back) is a moral failing. Racking up large bills on credit cards that you don’t know how you’re going to pay and then declaring bankruptcy rather than attempting to pay them is a moral failing.
Now, he mentions a medical issue. I don’t know what the level of contribution that was to his situation. If it was not something he could reasonably anticipate happening then that changes the situation. Shit happens. So I can’t say (and therefore asked) whether or not jed should have any regrets about this. But deliberately living beyond your means and then dumping what assets you have on people and saying “good luck” is not particularly moral in my book.
PG said:
Beyond the Supreme Court’s sanction for eugenic sterilization,
I’ve seen an interesting poll. The question was something along the lines of “Should Supreme Court Justices base their findings on their own opinions of what serves the ends of justice, or should they base them on what the Constitution says?” Likely Obama voters tended to favor the former, whereas McCain voters tended to favor the latter.
So I haven’t read Buck vs. Bell, but when you say that this was the fault of the Supreme Court I have to wonder whether it truly is their fault, or whether it’s the fault of the law? My viewpoint is that it’s up to the legislature to legislate, not the judiciary. So if there was no prohibition in the Constitution to prevent the states from doing this, I don’t see it as the fault of the Supreme Court for stopping it, it’s the fault of the legislatures.
Oh, I do love this. A proper use of anti-discrimination principles and equality before the law.
“I’ve seen an interesting poll. The question was something along the lines of “Should Supreme Court Justices base their findings on their own opinions of what serves the ends of justice, or should they base them on what the Constitution says?” Likely Obama voters tended to favor the former, whereas McCain voters tended to favor the latter.”
That came up on Fark. The thing I notice is this: the two biggest recent supreme court decisions were the one on habeas corpus in Guantanamo, and the one on the 2nd amendment in DC.
In both cases, it was a 5-4 decision. There was only one justice that sided with the constitution in both cases, and that was justice Kennedy. The other eight all fell along party lines.
The only difference between conservatives and liberals on constitutionality is that conservatives are better at branding themselves as “strict constructionalists” and similar bullshiat. When push comes to shove, everyone wipes their ass with the constitution in favor of whatever the hell they think is right.
The poll says the same thing – conservatives have all of Scalia’s claims of “constructionists” and have their talking points about “legislating from the bench” and “activist judges”, painting the liberal members of the justice system as being in flagrant denial of the constitution in favour of their own personal biases, when the truth is that nobody gives a damn about the constitution. Conservatives just have better PR on the subjec – if the talking point had been “it’s just a damned piece of paper and you folks all know what’s right” then that’s how they’d vote.
Ron, at the risk of sounding skeptical, a link to the poll would be appreciated.
So I haven’t read Buck vs. Bell, but when you say that this was the fault of the Supreme Court I have to wonder whether it truly is their fault, or whether it’s the fault of the law? My viewpoint is that it’s up to the legislature to legislate, not the judiciary. So if there was no prohibition in the Constitution to prevent the states from doing this, I don’t see it as the fault of the Supreme Court for stopping it, it’s the fault of the legislatures.
The Constitution is not as clear cut and obvious as some conservatives might have you believe. There is no explicit provision in the Bill of Rights that specifically bars states from banning contraception or forcibly sterilizing citizens. However, there is the 9th Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Some conservative judges and scholars (like Douglas Ginsburg and Randy Barnett) believe that the 9th Amendment guarantees the liberties that Englishmen had at the time of the Founding, which included abortion until “quickening” (the point at which the fetus kicks) and probably would protect against state-sponsored sterilization. So far as I know, King George III was not able to castrate his subjects. Others like Robert Bork say the 9th Amendment is meaningless.
Holmes tended to be deferential to the legislature, and he also was prejudiced against those whom he deemed his inferiors. If you read his opinion, it’s not a straightforward statement that the Constitution doesn’t bar sterilization; Holmes actively cheers the policy. This is in contrast to something like Thomas’s dissent in Lawrence (which said there was no rational basis for outlawing sodomy): Thomas said he thought the ban on sodomy was very silly, but he wasn’t a legislator and it wasn’t his job to strike down laws just for being silly. Obviously, that’s a different reading of what the “rational” in “rational basis” means than the reading from 6 other justices.
I tend to agree with the overall current position of constitutional law, which is that the Court gives a lot of deference to legislatures on economic regulations and rarely assumes that an economic regulation is “irrational.” However, the Court imposes a stricter standard of rationality on regulations that are of non-economic matters.
I don’t see Skinner v. Oklahoma as a superior decision to Buck v. Bell. Skinner endorses eugenic sterilization and merely says that committing grand larceny by trespass doesn’t make you a less fit propagator of the human race than committing it by embezzlement. The Oklahoma legislature could have rationally distinguished between someone who steals by intruding on my property, versus someone who steals because I have entrusted him with my property.
Thene: You’re saying it’s not a matter of luck if you’re born white, or if you have parents? What.
Generally, it’s not a matter of luck if you have a particular skin color or parents.
I know the word is commonly used, and it’s not totally inappropriate, but it has connections with random chance and that I disagree with in the context of family and social interactions nonskanse was referring to as his primary blessings.
Nonskanse: How the heck did I choose those things?
You didn’t, someone else did, or at least influenced circumstances in your favor.
Most things in my life I probably owe to my parents’ choices, which means I’m very lucky indeed.
Precisely. And it is your choice how “lucky” they are in return.
“Generally, it’s not a matter of luck if you have a particular skin color or parents.
I know the word is commonly used, and it’s not totally inappropriate, but it has connections with random chance and that I disagree with in the context of family and social interactions nonskanse was referring to as his primary blessings.”
I still believe that since I didn’t decide to be born, someone else decided, that it’s luck.
Of course my parents had the foresight to raise a kid that would feel guilty leaving them on the street, so they’ve got a nice retirement ahead of them ;P. I suppose they’re lucky that their sperm/egg contained the “child feels obligation” gene to pass on to me.
I’m a former presidential scholar, college-educated white 41yo woman with a 3 yo daughter. A year ago, I lived in a beautiful 5 bdrm home in a northern suburb of Seattle. I shared a rental home with other college graduates and professional working folks. After 5 years of having a stable healthy living environment, tragedy struck and we lost some roommates. Unable to replace them in time, we all became homeless. I was suddenly thrust into a world that had only existed in the eyes of people selling Real Change outside my neighborhood grocery store. There were no addictions involved. Everyone was of above average intelligence, a few of us were the working poor, one of us (me) was permanently disabled.
The single adults without pets had the most luck finding places to couch-surf their way back to stability. My daughter, my service dog (for aforementioned disability), my daughter’s cat and I were suddenly living from friend’s home to friend’s home and then out of our truck while aggressively pursuing every manner of social service and private program we could uncover all to little or no avail for 6 months. My friends kept us until their own landlords threatened eviction for the lease violation of having us there as visitors for more than 2 weeks. I found my own judgements about the homeless became the self–flagellation that was more cruel than any other leftist or conservative could muster.
After 6 months, I began to be able to surf the insanity of the process. In some sort of “go with the flow”-ness, I began to realize that since 5 case managers in 6 social service programs all said there was no adequate help for our situation, I couldn’t possibly do worse than nothing which is what the experts had come up with when attempting to aid us. I began to attempt the impossible. A few friends became the answers that didn’t exist in all the services we were utilizing. Some went into debt to help us. Some did research. Some let me bathe/cook/nap at their home even though they couldn’t offer me overnight refuge without losing their own home. One woman is still dealing with harassment because her landlord doesn’t recognize my service dog as a non-pet even with medical paperwork to back up our assertion that she is a specially trained medical service dog and that I am physically disabled. (In many years of being her handler and our being a team this hasn’t ever come up before.)
One time a stranger handed me a $20 when she heard my daughter crying that she was hungry in a grocery store while I was in tears on my Blackberry trying to navigate the impossible obstacles to our being re-homed, well-fed and safe. She and my friends who helped when they really couldn’t afford to are our heroes.
I’m in a transitional housing program now. ADA requires my landlord to give me permission to make reasonable changes to my apt to support me medically but they are not legally required to pay for the renovations. I signed the lease in July or I would have lost the opportunity. I’ve fought for 3 months to get supplies and contractors to do the job. It’s almost finished. I’m still not sure we’re going to make it.
I’m not paying my bills on time, the electric utility has scheduled us for disconnect because we can’t afford the deposit they require even thought I’m paying my usage bill. The storage unit is threatening to sell my stuff including medical equipment that I need to survive if I can’t come up with this months (late) rent. My car payment is 2 months behind and I’m not going to have the money for it again this month so of course I’m concerned about repo. I work as a nanny with my daughter at my side and it takes everything I have to get through a short (4-6hr) day of work 3 days a week. I no longer have a personal care attendant and I’m destroying my body doing things it isn’t up to just to survive.
My daughter knows that she is loved, speaks several languages and loves reading and math. She is gentle and out-going and self-confident. She heard that one of our friends who is diabetic didn’t have enough work to properly care for himself and she offered a $1 that she was given by another homeless person for her birthday. She knows how to pronounce soup kitchen and how to spell homeless. She loves people, even the ones that judge us and the ones who could help but for some strange reason don’t. She believes in the goodness of humanity even in the experience of its indifference to us.
I’m trying to believe. I don’t have a website or a regular blog but if you want to be an encouragement to my daughter or myself, I’m okay with uplifting email. If you want to help folks like us you can make sure your money or volunteer hours are well-invested by giving to groups like Hopelink http://www.hope-link.org/?gclid=CILh09H2gpYCFQ8QagodNCFvEg or Isaiah 58 Ministries http://www.livingwaterwa.com/Isaiah58.htm.
Thanks for taking the time to ready some of our story.
Mamazon
Here’s the poll.
Here are the questions.
When the Miller vs. the District of Columbia decision came down, I was shocked and very concerned that 4 Supreme Court justices could hold that the 2nd Amendment didn’t guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms. I could see arguing that the possession of a handgun in D.C. was analagous to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. I would think it was wrong, but it’s at least a rational argument. But to say that the 2nd Amendment was meant to mean that only militia members had a right to keep and bear arms seemed to me to be an attempt to rule based on the judge’s own sensibilities rather than on the Constitution.
I was shocked and very concerned that 4 Supreme Court justices could hold that the 2nd Amendment didn’t guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.
If you’re going by what’s in the words of the Constitution, you’ll have to point out the part of the 2nd Amendment that says anything about an individual right. “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (This is the grammar and spelling that was sent to the states for their ratification.)
Unlike the “right of the people” described in the 4th Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, the 2nd Amendment right of the people comes with a purpose (“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State”) indicating that the right can be exercised collectively. An individual has a person, house, papers and effects for which that individual can exercise his individual rights against unreasonable search, but an individual can’t really be a militia.
Moreover, the 2nd Amendment highlights the concerns of the several States, which heretofore had been fairly sovereign, that the Constitution would give too much power to a federal government that would become as tyrannical as King George III. Hence the language about “the security of a free STATE,” as opposed to the security of a free PEOPLE. Balanced against the Constitution’s grant of power to Congress to maintain a standing military, was this guarantee of the rights of the peoples of the several states to maintain their militias in order to fight any incipient tyranny of the federal government.
The idea that the 2nd Amendment is for an individual’s security against crime (or even more ludicrously, for hunting) has no relationship to the text and indicates that the person putting it forward is no true textualist. There have been originalist arguments that it makes sense *historically* to read it that way, particularly if one puts the federal 2nd Amendment in the context of state constitutions (though those obviously wouldn’t be needing to guarantee state militias’ ability to fight federal tyranny b/c it would be in the state’s own self-interest and command, whereas a federal government that could dissolve the militias would face less organized armed resistance to its tyranny).
But basing one’s reading on a particular set of historical texts other than the Constitution is different from the conservative claim that the Constitution is just as clear as daylight on every subject and only a liberal, who likes to say black is white and up is down, could see multiple plausible interpretations.
Older thoughts.
Maco – I kind of agree with you – eg. it certainly isn’t ‘luck’ that makes white skin an advantageous trait, it’s racism that makes white skin an advantageous trait. But it is luck that makes some of us souls benefit while others do not. I also see what you mean about other people’s choices. The problem with framing parenting in that light is that it always, always reverts to blaming the children, or forcing them to carry totally unnecessary burdens, which is why I believe that society should do what it can to protect children from suffering – to eliminate luck, you might call it, by making the right social choices, even if suffering itself cannot be eliminated.
(I have a hard time thinking of the fact that some children get parented and some children don’t as anything other than luck from the kid’s POV – one of my own parents had no interest in parenting, and the other died of a rare disease when I was 11. So…that’s where my perspective is coming from).
PG, I’m putting my reply to you on the current open thread.
The short version, PG, is that since establishment of a militia is necessary to counter the threat from the Federal government’s standing army, it is therefore necessary for individuals to have the right to keep and bear arms so as to counter the threat to them that the militia represents. More over at the open thread.
Nonskanse: I still believe that since I didn’t decide to be born, someone else decided, that it’s luck.
As you wish. It’s not a bad word to use, as long as you remember luck is something we make, as well as have.
Thene: The problem with framing parenting in that light is that it always, always reverts to blaming the children, or forcing them to carry totally unnecessary burdens
I don’t quite understand what you mean. How does framing parenting in that light revert to blaming the children or force unnecessary burdens on them?
The background you shared with me is what I consider luck, Thene. That is hard luck, I’m sorry. I’m glad at least that you still had someone, even a parentally-challenged someone.
Maco,
Yes, some luck you make yourself.
What I was saying, if I was missing some of these things many of which are out of my control, I probably wouldn’t have it as good as I do now. And yet, I still judge the poor and the homeless unthinkingly.
If I had parents who didn’t care about college, who didn’t show me when they paid the bills, then maybe I wouldn’t have even gone. My likelihood of choosing to go to college and learn financial stuff was much higher because of previously existing conditions over which I had no control.