SO MANY BARBARAS, ONLY ONE GEORGE - PART II of IV
I’LL NEVER BE YOUR BEAST OF BURDEN
by David Fierst

He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that
Honoureth Him has mercy on the poor.

Proverbs 14:31 KJV

No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.

Nickel and Dimed -
On Not getting By in America
Barbara Ehrenreich, Henry Holt and
Company, New Your 2001

I’ve never seen a bill that was so one-sided. The cries, claims and concerns of vulnerable Americans who have suffered a financial emergency have been drowned out by the political might of the credit card industry.

Former Senator Howard Metzenbaum,
regarding the “Bankruptcy Reform”
legislation

 

 

There is an old saying that goes something like this: “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to show up on the front page of the newspaper.” Likewise, thieves used to try to do their work in darkness. However, in this day and age, the deeds of evildoers not only make the newspapers, they get reported in riveting books like Nickel and Dimed - On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. In Nickel and Dimed, Ms. Ehrenreich provides an account of how many low wage earning Americans work furiously to stay afloat in a society dominated by corporate greed. Yet, rather than cringe in embarrassment over Ms. Ehrenreich’s disclosures, over the past few years our nation’s leaders have attempted to squeeze the working poor even harder.

For example, Ms. Ehrenreich points out, “(m)ost civilized nations compensate for the inadequacy of wages by providing relatively generous public services such as health insurance, free or subsidized child care, subsidized housing, and public transportation.”* Further, a recent Harvard University survey found “...more than half of all personal bankruptcy filings can be attributed to medical bills - and a majority of those filings actually had health insurance.** (Other frequent factors include divorce and job loss) Yet, rather than address the source of many bankruptcy filings - inadequate or nonexistant medical insurance - our Congress recently passed a bankruptcy “reform” bill which will make getting bankruptcy relief for average Americans even harder to get.

It’s interesting that in the aftermath of 9-11, many religious zealots stated God was mad at the United States and let the attack occur because of gay people, abortionists, and other people they consider heathens. What’s so sad about these fanatical folks is their short-sightedness is vastly exceeded by their lack of comprehension of the concepts of social justice overflowing the pages of the Good Book. Scriptures such as Proverbs 14:31 explain how God hates the exploitation of the poor. Yet, somehow, we have entered into a place of thought in our post-modern society where putting on a suit, working for a corporation, and making a pretense of personal piety is considered an acceptable substitute for thinking and dealing with the difficult issues involved in governing a democratic society containing a growing number of poor people. As Ms. Ehrenreich so aptly puts it “I (don’t) believe that management rules by divine right or the undiluted force of superior knowledge, as the (job) “surveys” demand you acknowledge.”***

Likewise, the so-called “liberal” media rarely takes up the cause of the working poor. Once, when I was told by one of my Republican friends that I needed to put aluminum foil in my hat because I said the media was corporate owned, I kindly pointed out to him that General Electric owns NBC, Westinghouse owns CBS, and Mickey Mouse owns ABC. Like it or not, the news media is not only not liberal, it is decidedly pro-business. Beginning with Reagan busting the air traffic controller’s union, the news media has cheered the demise of labor unions and rarely discusses the “giant sucking sound” of decent jobs flooding out of the country.
If you are interested in the direction our country is headed, I heartly recommend reading Nickel and Dimed. As Martin Niemoller once put it, “They came for me and their was nobody left.” Not only would “W” do well to heed the warning bells sounded by Barbara Ehrenreich, so would we.

In the next section, we will explore the analysis of history provided by the next Barbara, Barbara Tuchman.

* Nickel and Dimed, pg. 214

** The Senate’s Moral Bankruptcy Arriana Huffington, March 10, 2005

** Nickel and Dimed, pg. 127