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02.14.11 - 12:57 PM
If It Looks, Feels and Smells Like Shameful Hypocrisy...
After ranting and posturing for months about cutting spending and killing earmarks, the House this week will consider a bill that will shred services to poor people - including Head Start, nutrition programs for infants and heating subsidies this cold winter. But wait. What's this $450 million for military toys the military doesn't even want? And it would go to two cities in Ohio, where John Boehner grew up and now rules? Huh? Hypocrisy, much? These people are shameless.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllThe one cut that I don't dislike is the cut to heating subsidies. Our planet desperately needs everyone to cut energy use. If you're getting free heat, there's not much incentive to turn the thermostat down from 72 (or higher). Ours is set at 62. Layer on enough clothing and it's actually a very comfortable way to live.
Yeah, well then you'd probably be extremely comfortable at 38 degrees. You obviously just don't believe there are people trying to live without heat. You may not be heartless but you are certainly thoughtless.
PS - My thermostat is set at 60 during the day with lots of layers of clothing and 50 at night with lots of blankets on the bed. At least I have a roof and a bed. Why are you continuing to be so wasteful of our precious fossil fuels?
"Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed." -- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"
But then, Cratchit was free to save up and purchase a second comforter, or a warmer one.
I enjoyed yours and dkshaw's posts. However, if we all paid higher taxes and received cheap subsidized fuel, we would use up a diminishing resource more quickly and global climate change would worsen sooner. Not many would follow dkshaw's 50 degrees at night if they had cheap fuel.
If we hadn't spent trillions upon trillions since WWII trying to control the rest of the planet with an interventionist militarist foreign policy invading other countries in order to "open markets" and steal natural resources, OIL for example, and in order to "protect American interests" (multi-national corporate interests, that is), and to "maintain stability", even supporting the cruelest of dictators, we could have had unlimited renewable energy decades ago. Your comments are logical and true I suppose -- it's just that it wouldn't have had to be this way.
Dear Greg R: My heat subsidy is the only thing that keeps my pipes from freezing. I have to keep my thermostat at 55, except when the temperature is below zero when it has to be at 60 or above to keep my water service working. I have to ration this small subsidy very carefully to make it through the winter, otherwise I cannot cook, bathe, clean, or answer nature’s call. My best friend had to abandon his property, on which he had lived for twenty years, because he could not afford legal plumbing, and was harmlessly pooing under hay bales, much to the dismay of his greedy Republican neighbors, who think just like you do. When you are old and have poor circulation, let's hope living in the cold does not cause you to lose your lower legs, like happened to another friend, who died in depression and misery because she could no longer care for herself. CUTTING HEAT SUBSIDIES IS A DEATH SENTENCE TO MANY PEOPLE WHOSE ONLY CRIME IS TO BE OLD AND POOR. Shame on you Greg R.
Cutting heat subsidies is LITERALLY a death sentence to many people, with absolutely no hyperbole expressed in order to make a point. I wouldn't shame Greg R. because, although I don't necessarily like it he makes a logical point, there is certainly enough shame to go around.
Mine is set to 53 to 57 depending on how cold it is and how bad the drafts are. Excpet last week when I set it up to 60 when it was 18 below outside, and I didn't want the stuff in the rooms where the registers are close to freeze, or the little room under the kitchen where the pipes froze two years ago.
It would help if the house was insulated and I could put in storm windows, but I cant afford to do that.
My heat isn't free BTW -- the LIHEAP doesn't nearly cover all it costs, so with my only income being SSI diasbility I have to cut down.
Right now I am wearing an undershirt, a heavy flannel shirt, and 3 hooded sweatshirts -- on very cold days I put on a jacket or blanket. The problem is, with fibromyalgia, arthritus, and poor circulation from diabetes I have to be careful about getting too cold. If I could turn the thermostat up to 62 it would seem like heaven.
I'm lucky, though -- I can still afford to have some heat, unlike many others, such as all those people in Detroit who died in ghouse fires from electric heaters because their gas was turned off.
Maybe before people preach about not helping the poor they should find out what the real situation is. Those who don't have to live with it generally have NO idea what its like or how difficult it is to not have enough from basic needs.
Edit:
BTW -- with the conditions I described, that means the room I spend most time in is often at 50 deg. or lower -- and that's low enough to give me leg cramps, the skin on my hands cracked open during winter, and my joints sore ans stiffened up. Setting a thermostat does not simply translate into house temperature.
This comes after the Congress and Obama asked themselves, "What would Jesus cut?"
Cutting fuel subsidies to poor people is only cruel. They do the best they can in the crummy economic circumstances the wealthy monsters leave to them.
The income gap in the USA has to close. Everyone making more than one million dollars a year needs to be taxed at 100% until we get our financial house in order. The wealthy gain the most from society, and they deserve to pay to fix it since it was they who bought and paid for the government that caused the conditions for fraud, and for wars, and more unlimited military spending, and they own the media to perpetuate it. Take the money from the wealthy and restore our budgetary balance. If the rich have to forego the new Rolls, then too bad, and too bad for Rolls Royce, makers of sinful indulgences.
Hypocrisy? But that is what Rep. John "Boner" does regularly. One minute he is against it and then the next thing you know he does just what he said he was against. Pork in his district? How else do you think he will be re-elected next time round? John will make sure things happen in Ohio if he is told by the lobbyists.
hypocrisy is bad indeed, but what the innocent victim on the picture has to do with it - is there a shortage of pictures of politicians?
Watson for President. Not only is he smarter, capable of considering several values at the same time, unbiased in his database of knowledge and his command of it, Watson would be more empathetic and compassionate than Obama if given the prime directive-minimize human suffering. "All this money going to the defense department does not compute, is senseless, only increases human hurt and suffering. Real Healthcare not Warfare." that is what Watson would say, it's elementary.