Reflection...

I spent the day recording, cleaning, selling, and looking for office space.

That gave me a lot of time to think. 

I finally realize why the man in the basement pisses me off - he throws tantrums to get his way and then drops the ball without telling me.  He'll demand that I put making a home for him first (enforced by flying fists) and my work second.  Then he gets fat, and gets fired for his obesity*, pays a $500  bribe to keep his job, loses his job (doesn't tell me), doesn't sue in spite of evidence that his former employer is harassing us, refuses to move from the city in which the employees are harassing us, gives up working, gets fat and unemployable.....

 and wonders why I can't make a living wage for someone else immediately without going back to school. 

Sigh..

I finally realized why workfare pisses me off - it is a way to keep women stuck in low wage jobs while depressing their earning power.   It also forces them to stay in abusive marriages without the ability to save up the money to leave.

If 85% of the funds going to welfare are being used to interfere in the lives of families, perhaps it is time to gut the heck of the program. 

Sigh..

I finally realize why Democrats piss me off - they dance around with conservatives, not giving a damn whether or not the laws they vote for actually hurt the poor.  Then, after they put so many freakin' roadblocks in the way of actually allowing people to get help, they blame people like me! 

I finally realize why Republicans piss me off - they want to help make people self-sufficient but they are pandering to their friends, passing over burdensome regulations that keep the competition out.  This is how they continue ensuring that their friends can prosper by raking the rest of us over the coals.

People are poor in this county because of over regulation.  WE THINK regulation exists for safety reasons.  It does not!  In fact nothing can be further from the truth, regulation exists to keep the status quo.  It keeps people down.  It makes it hard for the average person to make money without working for someone else. 

Most people cannot afford the regulatory process; the fees, the unnecessary education, the taxes, the legal process navigating the bureaucracy. 


My rant today is inspired by a woman I met in the parking lot of a grocery store.  She has children, so she'd have to pay someone to watch her children before and after school so she could do the compulsory workfare.  She cannot qualify for food stamps.  She took borrowed money, made burritos and is selling them in the parking lot for a profit, so she can buy more food for her family. 

She is not licensed.  How could she afford the fee?

She had her kids with her.  How could she possibly afford over-regulated and expensive daycare? 

Think about it.

I'm never going to forget the welfare worker who called my home when the man in the basement tried to sign the kids up for state sponsored health insurance (they call it CHP+).  The kids were put on Medicaid and food stamps.  They called me and asked if I could guarantee a salary of $212.00 per week.

Nope, I can't.  I work for myself. 

So, they told me they'd get me a job.  They didn't tell me it is unpaid.   I went down to the workforce center.  I lifted 40 lb heavy boxes (despite being told my doctors not to do that until I have an operation) and was chastised for being lazy by a man with a thick Indian accent who thought he was God.

I'm not joking about the God thing.  I studied religion.  He didn't even have the name of a Hindi God but he claimed that people treat him like he is a God.  Yeah, that is the first sign that the bureaucracy is too damn much....your case workers begin to believe they are a Deity if they manage to help one person.

That man with the savior complex called me lazy because the man in the basement signed up for CHP+.

You see, workfare isn't intended to help you find a job that fits your education, your experience or expertise.  It is a way to remove jobs from the public sector in an effort to pay the people back, if you will.  You take the job they give you, one that reduces the stress of the local govenment...without pay...in exchange for what amounts to be $1 in public benefit per hour. 

Don't let the politicians fool you.  Despite their promises that this is job training that will get people to get their arses out of bed in the morning, train them to get real jobs and get off of welfare; these are dead end jobs with no promise of a full-time job paying above poverty level wages.  They are replacing living wage public sector employees with workfare people! 

It's a supply and demand thing: If an employer has a steady stream of free workers, why in the world would they ever hire anyone on salary? 

Workfare is no deal for anyone.


Seriously, if I can be free to earn what I can and pay taxes to the government, it will be a much better deal for the people than if I push paper for the county government. 


I laughed when he called me lazy.  He obviously doesn't read the paper. 

Apparently, it IS policy for him to call every applicant lazy.  I wish I were joking but as a coach who was previously paid $175 an hour to motivate people to get off their arses....hypnotizing people to believe they are lazy will only serve to demotivate their clients. 


I'll never forget him.  Pray they don't ask for a tax hike this year or he'll be famous. 

The CHP + application has been a complete waste of time for our family. 


The kids are still uninsured as I cannot meet the workfare requirements due to my disability and my Libertarian thick-headedness.  If I could have done what the county asked, my ex would have earned $30 a week in exchange for my 30 hours of labor.  I would not have had any money to pay for my NSAIDS to help with my pain.   I'm still not sure how I would have paid for before/after school care for the kids either. 

It would have cost me more than $30 a week for him to earn $30 in medicaid/foodstamps. 

I think he's been sanctioned.  I don't know as I cannot communicate with the county at all.  I asked them to remove the application and they told me they couldn't do that.  So, God only knows how much taxpayer money was spent sending him letters because it's too expensive for me to play their stupid game. 

How I got into this mess...

I trusted an idiot.  I gave up my job and education to keep the peace in my home.  When he lost his job, I took what I could and started a business.  The moment I began to make a profit, things went to hell. 

He took a job for the very same hours I was working.  The kids were unsupervised.  They weren't doing their homework. They were, in short, being neglected.  I couldn't aford daycare, so I tried to work hours which opposed his.  The problem is that most people can only schedule appointments for the services I offer during the hours he is working. 
My estranged spouse promised that if I gave up what I was doing to watch the kids, he would take a job that paid $50,000 per year and offer health insurance.  Actually, for 18 months he made $10 per hour and no insurance but failed to tell me that until eight months after taking that job.  Next month, that job may or may not turn into a $40,000 per year gig and may or may not offer insurance sometime in the near future. 

He's gone from 4:00 am to 8:00 pm.  He was working Saturday.  That left me with little time to see clients and be with the kids during the summer.  I gave up my office to focus on Internet work.  That was a mistake; it is going to take a lot of money to get set up online.  The state I am in will not allow me to coach online without seeing the client in person first (so I need an office). Thus, I can only sell self-help materials online. 

Yes, I screwed up in trusting a man. 

I do understand why his boss is working him for $18,000 per year.  This economy stinks.  I wonder how much of this pussyfooting around with benefits is due to Obamacare.  Companies do not know what is going to happen, so they don't know what they can afford to do!

Still, it is the man in the basement's responsibility to find out what is going on and let me know.  If he continues to fail to do that, it is my responsibility to leave him and take care of business on my own.

It was unfair for him to expect me to depend on him while dropping the ball. 
In the meantime, if the kids get sick, I'll just force the sale of this damn house to pay the bill.

 I will not trust tax hikes to fund medicaid or CHP either, how are the poor going to get on the program to use it without making themselves poorer?  Workfare is a problem and the politicians are blind to the ways in which they are contributing to poverty. 

Oh, and now the man in the basement is whining that he gained weight during those lean days when all we ate was bread.  You know, if we have no money due to a lack of planning one has to eat what one has.  If it bothers him, he should bitch at the politicians for failing to study social science and failing to consider the ramifications for adding to a bureaucratic process. 

If it weren't for his foibles, I wouldn't have become the bitch I am today.  If he weren't so damn trusting with the government, I wouldn't have known that they violate wage law, abuse people, fine people illegally, harass people, violate their own laws, and waste our tax money like they do. 

Maybe this relationship had to happen.  I've learned a lot from the man but I'm not too damn happy about it. 

Love ya,

S. 

Update: I'm currently selling my stuff and trying to earn money to rent another office. He promised to help. I don't trust him. I'll do it myself.  I have no clue how long it will take to get back where I was when this fiasco began.  I am looking for an office in the arts district; that way I can make money as a therapist or as an artist. 

I'll let you know what happens. 

Oh...I almost forgot.

* When I was running for mayor his former boss sent me an ultra-nasty email telling me she fired my estranged spouse for being "fat" and lazy (firing people for obesity is a violation of the ADA).  She didn't mention her slander of me which was what the city cited during the unemployment hearing; they claimed to fired him because of my auto-immune disorder, my master's degree and some story she made up and spread about me getting slammed into a wall in the middle of the night.  Later we learned that she was thrown into a wall at night by an abusive spouse.  Projection can be an expensive problem for companies.  They ought to get that woman help before someone who is not politically active sues them.  If I weren't in the public eye, I would have initiated a lawsuit of my own because I do tire of hearing about my allegedly eating drywall.


During my campaign, I promised to respond to every email.  However, my ex's lawyer forbade me from questioning why overweight people have $250,000 auditing quotas while thin people don't....

I wanted to know why these quotas exist.  The city attorney refused to admit that $250,000 quotas exist.  They are not quotas, he said, terming them performance goals.   Yes, people are routinely fined and fired for failing to meet these performance goals which vary depending upon the discrimination of the supervisor and department head. 

Here is the deal.  Tax Auditors with quotas are bad for a city's bottom line.  Auditors are not revenue generating officials, they are compliance officials.  I AM currently working with the State to remedy that issue.  It may take some time but I will get there.

-AND-

I am working with lawmakers and unions to get workplace protections in place, despite daily hack attempts on my website. 

-AND-

I'm hoping to find someone to run with my complaint that government officials do not have to honor the same rules that we do.  They can violate telemarketing rules, workplace rules, discrimination rules, tax rules and so on...

Why aren't they forced to lead by example? 

Why do we keep voting these losers in? 

I know...normal everyday people don't want their jobs.   Politicians are not the ones in control.  They are just the spokesmen.   I learned the hard way that the people who fund their campaigns are really in control of what happens. 

Sad, isn't it?