Very Large Grackle
Flying to Tree
on the Gulf Coast,
Southern Texas, 2001.
Governmentalism is not an ideology. It is a method of taking control of money, people, resources, and existing forms of government.
The rise of the 'social welfare-industrial complex' has involved the recruitment of social welfare recipients to tax- and bill-collect the taxpayer sector of the population to obtain more free governmental-administered welfare products and services. During the Clinton Administrations (1992-2000) this occurred officially through 'welfare to work' program jobs, computer-IRS database grants and small business loans. Clinton Administration staff encouraged an aggressive 'redistribution of wealth' mentality among 'people of color', other ethnics, developmental/mentally retarded/emotionally disturbed and other groups who feel themselves to be 'needier' or poorer than others, disenfranchised, or who simply want more free products and services.
'Dispatch Politics' reported a record 16% increase in federal spending during the recession. Federal domestic spending rose to $3.2 Trillion in 2009, the Obama Administration's first year.
Other data reveal social welfare spending increased to $744 Billion. The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS, 'welfare') receives over half of this amount, $444.9 Billion. Two major welfare programs, 'Temporary Assistance for Needy Families' ('TANF') and the Food Stamp Program, are funded.
By one estimate, 77.9% of domestic funding flows to HHS, the Department of Education, and the Department of Transportation.
The 'bail out' of the federal budget for social welfare has stimulated bill collecting by recipients in one department to cover spending in another. An example is the growth of privatized bill collecting companies, some initially funded by grants, then 'spun-off' as hybird profit/non-profit companies affiliated with the 'student loan industry' by Department of Education and Health & Human Services programs.
Students or applicants never involved with one or either department are researched, names and amounts are added to these new bill collecting files. New 'Amounts Due' are adjusted upward with extremely high finance charges. The individual's social security number is termed an 'account number'. And the menacing, stalking, and harassment, using governmental computers, databases, postage, and other resources begins.
The governmentalist 'student loan industry' is frighteningly Orwellian and revisionist. 'Big brother/big sister' is watching, even if the student is not really there to watch.
Political and bureaucratic friends have used these 'loss/default' insurance files to obtain 'default' money for themselves for 'house flipping' and other 'scratch' money for their own start-ups and other businesses. When they do not repay their business loans based on hoped for bill collections, they sell student names to their lenders and re-financiers. Then another cycle of unfair bill collecting begins.
Thus privacy rights are eroded everyday, as the real US laws against 'Racketeer Influenced Crime Organizations', extortion, extortionate extension of credit, under the color of government authority, are violated.
Meanwhile, real socio-econmic problems in the US increase. Despite the phenomenal growth in the social welfare budget, there are numerous stories of people suffering, without the basics of adequate food and a room, a place from which to look for a job, without assistance beyond encouragement provided by a truly concerned social worker.
Two recent stories in a small city newspaper highlighted homelessness. 'Offering hope to throwaway kids' is the first of a 2-part series on the rising number of homeless students. 19 year old Wilson Umanzor, walked miles to work and high school until he quit high school. He got a another job to continue to pay his room, then had difficulties at school and otherwise. He was paying 3/4 of his fast food job wages ($300 of $400 monthly) for a room rented from people he knew. After othr difficulties, he was being asked to leave his room. His story may be complicated by immigration issues involving his family, parents now divorced and living in 2 states, Virginia and Texas, who did not provide even a free room for him.
The other story involves local 'police getting tougher on aggressive panhandlers'. The article implied the problem was the 'panhandler' going to the same location everyday. The local solution involved changing the nuisance to a crime punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Only a small number of people appear to be involved, '12 of the 23 offenders were charged 2 or more times with aggressive solicitation'.
It is wrong for people who have rooms, food, and social services to go out to 'panhandle' or to demand money by verbal or physical aggression. But if they are truly in need of the basics, and going out to politely ask for help, it shows a horrible unfairness in society.
If the later is true, it seems to be a small enough number of people to be housed in a truly low-cost 'rooming house'. It is as if these panhandlers have been asked to make the choice of going into the hills to die rather than ask for help or become a criminal and go into debt to the local police or courts.
This is not an isolated problem in a small city in Virginia. It is important not to allow the US to slip into becoming a much meaner society in which many people, whether private citizens or governmental grant or loan recipients, do nothing positive to provide assistance unless it personally makes money for them.
It often appears that some people are being 'pushed down' to be 'data' for others, in the social services, and 'legal' services including police and courts, to get grants or loans, only for salaries for themselves. These lucky people then meet to discuss social welfare needs rather than provide direct services, like cheap rooms, food, or transportation to essential functions.
It is time to check these social welfare budgets to find out where the money is, what is done with the money. When so many people complain of needs for basics like food, shelter, transportation, the money should be used for direct services, not endless meeting schedules, data entry and elaborate equipment, statistical studies, and related but irrelevant information gathering and packaging. The grants and loans do appear to create jobs for people who fit this skill set. And the limited number of job openings make finding jobs more difficult
US families also should be reminded that 'charity begins at home'. Family members should be asked to provide for other family members, at least with a free or cheap room from which the distressed person can go out to apply for jobs, make new friends, and piece back together an independent living situation.
Many people have lost jobs, professional or occupational status and projected income, through no fault of their own, in this recessionary economy. It is not humanitarian at home to 'blame the victim' who did nothing wrong, but had the misfortune of returning to school or working for the wrong company at the wrong time in a fluid, rapidly changing workplace of short-term, temporary, part-time jobs.
Email mkrause@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com to comment or request a copy of this or other blogs posted by mary for monthlynotesstaff on http://monthlynotes21.blogspot.com (http://monthlynotes.blogspot.com through '21') on www.google.com. See http://monthlynotes18.blogspot.com and '19' for bloglists of titles and URLs.
Graphic: An Original Photographic of a 'Very Large Grackle, Flying to Tree, on the Gulf Coast, Southern Texas, 2001, copyright, mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com.
Reference: 'The Free Lance-Star', Fredericksburg, VA, Sunday, March 13, 2011 p.1 and Sunday, March 20, 2011, p.1.
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