People are not prepared or being prepared for environmental catastrophes and under Trump they are going to get no help if Project 2025 is to be believed. They do not want to help people. I am not clear at this point what people are going to be getting for their federal taxes.
I think we have to become big environmentalists and band togeth…
People are not prepared or being prepared for environmental catastrophes and under Trump they are going to get no help if Project 2025 is to be believed. They do not want to help people. I am not clear at this point what people are going to be getting for their federal taxes.
I think we have to become big environmentalists and band together. I wrote a piece about my trying to figure out how to adapt to the environment where I have moved to in Germany.
I don't think that true. My friends/family who are married or own homes have all sorts of benefits in terms of tax breaks that a single person not of means can't access. I was just told that the HUD dwnpmt assistance for 1st time home buyers progs are shut, but if you already have a house they can give you money to fix it. There are countless means tested progs directed towards the middle, just not enough of a middle. All these analyses from local gvmt about how to end poverty or help poor people except require living wages and stop letting VCs + corps buy up real estate and then gouge people to death. Being very poor or in poor health in the US is a nightmare and means your life expectancy is already 10 yrs shorter than ave person. There are no free lunches if you are poor and the handouts are so small as to not do anything more than maybe keep you from starving but you can work full time and still be homeless, and you will not have real 'healthcare' in a crisis with medicaid. I worked from the time I was 16 and became I'll during covid and now on SSDI, so I've seen both sides. If you have a home in the US and can hold onto it, you'll have a much better time of things than the rest. Unless you're in the path of a natural disaster. But that's weather, not Nazis and eugenicists from the gvmt trying to put you out to pasture.
Anne, you're not here in CA? When I didn't have any money to buy food, I went to food pantries and local food giveaways, until the ACA came in, and we got help paying for medical, which I needed for my husband. Berkeley has four giveaways, I think, and I went to three of them, a different one each week.
Thank you for that. We're ok now, but it was super dicey toward the end of the pandemic when I started running out of money waiting for SSDI and my partner was taking care of me. It was the first time I'd ever needed that kind of help and it was truly unsustainable. Making it work was, as you describe, a full time job and ACA/medicaid was truly necessary because housing assistance is a 20 yr wait list or something. It took them 2 yrs to finally give me SSDI without a hearing. They mishandled my case and I think didn't want to be in front of a judge with it, and they shorted the back pay substantially so I'm still digging out of debt from the whole thing. But now we're stuck for housing at double rent from 5 yrs ago and the majority of my PMT, I could not live on my own even if I wanted to.
I'm not unfortunately, I miss central CA. We are in NY now which is a GOP In Drag state full of machine Dems who haven't done much to improve things for the poor here but lots of "public private partnerships" where the developers drain the tax kitty and then when the voters catch on to the corruption the Dems golden parachute out. Schumer Gillebrand Hochul Byron Brown so much corruption, so little time.
Thank you Anne. I don't disagree with you, but I don't retract what I said. I guess I'm very poor. I'm definitely not Middle Class. I do own a (small, cheap) house, which I almost lost until Obamacare got going. And I still may lose it if Social Security and Medicare are cut. And they will be cut.
Margaret, do not let that small house go, I pray it keeps you afloat. And don't even think SSA is going away. 20% of the US pop is receiving an SSA retirement benefit. I think my problem with the whole thing - not you but the dialogue we have been/are allowed to have about what's happening and what led to this - is that nobody can have an honest conversation about what happens with 40 years or regressive trickle down taxation - and now we're being told there's not 'enough' to go around and it's complete bullshit. I have a degree in polisci and development econ and it's just bullshit. There's plenty of food, there's plenty of resources - we just can't have a quarter of the population living like kings and letting people starve. And the US has a lot of this greedy grubby hoarding resources going on. It's a shame because this country also has so much going for it. When Andrew yang talked about a basic income people laughed at him. But if you listened to his freakonomics episode he explained the whole thing w/automations and predicted what's happening now. All of this was avoidable but we've been bamboozled by corporations and politicians telling us there's not enough and not everyone deserves to live but we can still have more with no consequences. It didn't have to be this way for us.
People are not prepared or being prepared for environmental catastrophes and under Trump they are going to get no help if Project 2025 is to be believed. They do not want to help people. I am not clear at this point what people are going to be getting for their federal taxes.
I think we have to become big environmentalists and band together. I wrote a piece about my trying to figure out how to adapt to the environment where I have moved to in Germany.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/lets-not-forget-the-climate?r=f0qfn
Here, I expect to get government support still if there is a climate catastrophe. Up until now one could expect that in the US too.
Thanks, Linda. I wish our government supported us. Unless you're very wealthy or very poor you're on your own.
Soon to be only the wealthy.
"The bankers will always land on their feet," my Dad used to say.
I don't think that true. My friends/family who are married or own homes have all sorts of benefits in terms of tax breaks that a single person not of means can't access. I was just told that the HUD dwnpmt assistance for 1st time home buyers progs are shut, but if you already have a house they can give you money to fix it. There are countless means tested progs directed towards the middle, just not enough of a middle. All these analyses from local gvmt about how to end poverty or help poor people except require living wages and stop letting VCs + corps buy up real estate and then gouge people to death. Being very poor or in poor health in the US is a nightmare and means your life expectancy is already 10 yrs shorter than ave person. There are no free lunches if you are poor and the handouts are so small as to not do anything more than maybe keep you from starving but you can work full time and still be homeless, and you will not have real 'healthcare' in a crisis with medicaid. I worked from the time I was 16 and became I'll during covid and now on SSDI, so I've seen both sides. If you have a home in the US and can hold onto it, you'll have a much better time of things than the rest. Unless you're in the path of a natural disaster. But that's weather, not Nazis and eugenicists from the gvmt trying to put you out to pasture.
Anne, you're not here in CA? When I didn't have any money to buy food, I went to food pantries and local food giveaways, until the ACA came in, and we got help paying for medical, which I needed for my husband. Berkeley has four giveaways, I think, and I went to three of them, a different one each week.
Thank you for that. We're ok now, but it was super dicey toward the end of the pandemic when I started running out of money waiting for SSDI and my partner was taking care of me. It was the first time I'd ever needed that kind of help and it was truly unsustainable. Making it work was, as you describe, a full time job and ACA/medicaid was truly necessary because housing assistance is a 20 yr wait list or something. It took them 2 yrs to finally give me SSDI without a hearing. They mishandled my case and I think didn't want to be in front of a judge with it, and they shorted the back pay substantially so I'm still digging out of debt from the whole thing. But now we're stuck for housing at double rent from 5 yrs ago and the majority of my PMT, I could not live on my own even if I wanted to.
I'm not unfortunately, I miss central CA. We are in NY now which is a GOP In Drag state full of machine Dems who haven't done much to improve things for the poor here but lots of "public private partnerships" where the developers drain the tax kitty and then when the voters catch on to the corruption the Dems golden parachute out. Schumer Gillebrand Hochul Byron Brown so much corruption, so little time.
Thank you Anne. I don't disagree with you, but I don't retract what I said. I guess I'm very poor. I'm definitely not Middle Class. I do own a (small, cheap) house, which I almost lost until Obamacare got going. And I still may lose it if Social Security and Medicare are cut. And they will be cut.
Margaret, do not let that small house go, I pray it keeps you afloat. And don't even think SSA is going away. 20% of the US pop is receiving an SSA retirement benefit. I think my problem with the whole thing - not you but the dialogue we have been/are allowed to have about what's happening and what led to this - is that nobody can have an honest conversation about what happens with 40 years or regressive trickle down taxation - and now we're being told there's not 'enough' to go around and it's complete bullshit. I have a degree in polisci and development econ and it's just bullshit. There's plenty of food, there's plenty of resources - we just can't have a quarter of the population living like kings and letting people starve. And the US has a lot of this greedy grubby hoarding resources going on. It's a shame because this country also has so much going for it. When Andrew yang talked about a basic income people laughed at him. But if you listened to his freakonomics episode he explained the whole thing w/automations and predicted what's happening now. All of this was avoidable but we've been bamboozled by corporations and politicians telling us there's not enough and not everyone deserves to live but we can still have more with no consequences. It didn't have to be this way for us.