MONEY

On Syria And Why Being Poor (Not Privileged) Prompts Me Not To Vote For Hilary

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If I could begin to express the level of despair I felt watching this video…I would… but I don’t think my heart could take it.

When you have connections…real connections, to all parts of the globe you die a little when you witness hurt blasted (or ignored) on TV…It’s impossible to watch people crying and distraught in the street after something like this when you know that could just as easily be your family or friends…but our world is cut off from theirs, isn’t it?

We are soft as an effect of our 1st world comforts and equally as hard as a result of the incessant onslaught of images like these… We think: “that’s so sad” and then promptly change to something uplifting to lighten the mood. It never crosses our mind that Rome fell. Things in our country are not perfect. We aren’t far behind.

Syria used to be a beautiful vacation spot,

plage

hama     ibnwalid.jpg

home to a major seed bank, beautiful historical ruins, and a crucial part of the fertile crescent a.k.a the cradle of all known civilization;

now it (like so many others before it) doesn’t hold a candle to a shadow of it’s former self.

My adopted Uncle was born and raised near the Doctors Without Boarders hospital that was bombed this week. He used to go back frequently to visit family. He was well to do. He had a few homes there.

Nowadays, my Uncle is no longer well to do. He’s a lot grayer all of his homes there are destroyed and he can’t go back anymore or it’s likely he won’t return. I remember when he’d complain about Assad occasionally but the economy was stable then so I don’t recall it being a daily thing.

“It started with the drought” he’d say… (global warming seems to be a reoccurring precursor to a lot of these issues but, I digress) once food prices increased so did overall tensions and the kettle began to boil…

Our mixing pot here is boiling, but we’re too busy calling the kettle black to notice we’re on the tipping point too.

This election is about more than defeating Trump or a woman satisfying her insatiable ego by becoming president. This is it. This is a defining moment for us, our fork in the road where our choices are immediate destruction(Ted Cruz/Trump), cruise control at 65 on our current pathway to destruction (Hilary), or Bernie… who just wants us to spend with our true interests in mind, tax with our true interests in mind, and view the world with an emphatic heart.

I can’t compromise, because I see my future in the eyes of refugees dying on the streets of their own city. I can’t in good faith vote for Hilary knowing her track record of violence and disdain for black and brown people. She has and will continue to propagate the type violence I just witnessed and I can’t be party to that. Being poor not privileged is what propels my decision not to support Hillary because my vote is my voice and I can’t allow any outside pressure to silence me.

Hubris doesn’t allow us to see just how badly our tight rope is fraying as we walk it. We continue our jeering and crusading, nose turned up to those already fallen.

But

as oceans rise, water get scares and dirty, education becomes a privilege as opposed to right, and inflation devalues our already maxed out 50 hour work week; we’ll eventually have to come to grips with the fact that chickens really do come home to roost. Our insensitivity and deeds done aboard won’t be readily forgotten by those who we’ve wronged in the name of “Democracy”.

I’ll leave you with only final thought…

Imagine if you will the frothy head of a beer, toppling over the rim  in excess with mad abandon as if the spout will never run dry, suppressing the bubbling brown body of the beverage which suffocates below the foam… Eventually the bartender cuts flow and either tips the glass or runs across it with a blade cutting the head off and settling the liquid. Who are you in this analogy, the liquid or the foam?

Poor Families Pay Double The State And Local Tax Rate As The Rich: Study

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Middle- and low-income Americans are facing far higher state and local taxes than the wealthy, according to a new report assessing tax data from all 50 states. In all, the analysis by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) finds that the poorest 20 percent of households pay on average more than twice the effective state and local tax rate (10.9 percent) as the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (5.4 percent).

Read More….

‘We’re a Movement Now’: Fast Food Workers Strike in 150 Cities

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FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR OF “LOST BELOW THE FOLD” LAUREN CROOM

Understanding and talking about what is “unjust” is common. However, to stand up for yourself and others who are voiceless, by walking off the job with no guarantee that you will have one to return to is just pure heroism.

BY SETH FREED WESSLER

KANSAS CITY, Mo.— Fast food workers are expected to walk off the job in an estimated 150 cities on Thursday, with employees in many locations planning nonviolent civil disobedience.

Organizers say the strike—with potentially widespread arrests of workers—marks an intensification of a two-year campaign to raise hourly pay in the industry to $15 and to win workers’ right to form a union. On Thursday morning, organizers said dozens of workers had been arrested in Detroit and New York’s Times Square.

In Kansas City, Missouri, workers are expected to walk out of 60 restaurants. Latoya Caldwell, a Wendy’s worker, is one of dozens of fast food employees in Kansas City who plan to sit down in a city intersection, lock arms and get arrested.

“We’re a movement now,” Caldwell said on Wednesday before starting a shift at Wendy’s. She and several co-workers said that 25 of the more than 30 non-management employees in their restaurant have pledged to strike. “We know this is going to be a long fight, but we’re going to fight it till we win,” said Caldwell, 31, who is raising four children alone on $7.50 an hour and was living in a homeless shelter until earlier this year.

The strikers cite frustration about their continued struggle to survive at the bottom of the labor market even as the broader economic news seems positive. “They say the economy is getting better, but we’re still making $7.50,” said Caldwell. “Nobody should work 40 hours a week and find themselves homeless, without enough money to buy them and their kids food, needing public assistance.”

Click here to read more about “The Movement” and the strikes being held today….