http://sorgenfrei.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/get_smart_shoe_phone.jpg

I’m thinking we need to call up CONTROL and kill two birds with one stone here.

I really think that was a combination of old people not knowing how cheap cell phones are these days combined with old-fashioned poor person hatred.

I think it also has to do with people who need poor people to look poor, act poor, and stay poor.  That way they can continue their karma-laundering change handout habits and maximize their feel good, as well as look down their noses at the dirty poor people.

90% of class and status is appearance.  Why do you think the right wing hates merit so much?  How can you function if you don’t know whose ass to kiss and who should be kissing yours?

“90% of class and status is appearance.  Why do you think the right wing hates merit so much?  How can you function if you don’t know whose ass to kiss and who should be kissing yours?”

...sounds like we need to bring back good, old-fashioned, sumptuary laws.  That way you’ll always know where you are in relationship to anyone else.  And it stops all that pesky social mobility that causes such big problems for the Overclass…

Good idea, Mike. First rule will be that only registered liberals can eat foods other than beef, pork and chicken…

I’m old enough to remember when having a telephone in your house at all was considered a no-no for a welfare recipient. Finally, somebody got carried away by an attack of common sense about job opportunities, emergencies, etc. all being much harder if not impossible to deal with when there is no phone available.

“But officials at Dayton homeless shelters say that the clients who have cell phones are usually the ones who are the most serious about finding employment and housing.”

Sounds about right.  You probably see a similar phenomenon with hand-up things like bikes and public transport passes; people who are resisting the urge to pawn the goods for immediate-gratification-friendly cash aren’t likely to be doing it just for the thrill of resisting temptation.

I admit that up until a year or two ago, I wore a lot of clothes that were not really flattering on me. Since then, I’ve culled my wardrobe to stuff that typically fits, and some stuff for when I have to take prednisone and put on 15 pounds seemingly overnight. But I’ve dumped a lot of stuff that’s in good shape and fairly stylish. If someone who can’t afford to buy a $30 sweater new at Macy’s got mine from the free shop (I donate everything that isn’t better off in the rag bag), so much the better. I hope someone’s getting use or enjoyment out of clothing that I found uncomfortable either because they were ill-fitting or because I knew they weren’t right for my shape. What is wrong with people that they would rather see someone in rags than decent stuff? I guess in a perfect world I never would have bought things I was going to eventually get rid of, but you know, we all make mistakes.

Remember the Michelle Obama-homeless shelter-cell phone brouhaha from last month?

Please keep in mind that this was to feed a general meme about Michelle Obama being a horrible person.  Feeding the not-really-homeless can get leveraged into “Michelle Obama doesn’t care about you, hate hate hate” down the line.  It also plays well with the shifty negroes meme.

If this was a poor white guy with a cell phone getting feed by Laura Bush, you’d be hearing all about how cell phones have become the modern day bootstraps by which the poor pulls themselves up.

So reading into this at all is a somewhat hollow affair.  We’ll keep trying to define real world psychology.  The wingnut noise media will keep making everything up as they go along.

I sort donated clothing destined for the the free-shop at a local food bank. We weed out the stuff that’s unwearable; most of the donations are in great shape. So even if your wardrobe comes entirely from other people’s cast-offs, it’s still going to be functional, hole-free, smells fine, not worn out, etc. Other than possibly being slightly out of style (and often not even that), donated clothes don’t look any different from those bought at a store.

Not only this, but there are organizations that are entirely dedicated to helping poor people find clothes that are suitable for job interviews/work.  On several occasions (usually involving weight gain or loss, but also when my law firm when business casual) I’ve donated almost my entire suit wardrobe to Dress For Success.  Non-trendy boring-ass suits rarely go out of style, even if I’ve stopped wearing them. 

How do people expect the disadvantaged to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they don’t have boots?  You can’t walk into a job interview looking like you slept in your clothes.  You need a way, not only for you to reach potential employers, but for those potential employers to reach you.  A cellphone is a lot cheaper than a landline, particularly considering that a landline generally requires an apartment or house to put it in.

Oh please.  If the poor can afford cell phones, then obviously the rich are being taxed too much. 

The solution is tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  More than enough wealth is being redistributed if the poor have cell phones!  Let those who work for their millions keep it and invest it and let it trickle down.

If the poor need to sacrifice cell phones so that the rich don’t feel put out, well, they really didn’t deserve them in the first place anyway, being as they aren’t the right sort of people.

I am very broke right now and unemployed (though starting next week, I’ll be re-employed!), but the one bill I pay every month on time is my cell phone bill.  Without it, I have no hope of getting a job, because prospective employers need someway to get in touch with me.

People expect the homeless to look unpresentable and not have any possessions to speak about so that they can wallow in their privilege. We further expect them to perform our version of what it means to be either poor or homeless.  You ever notice how worked up people get if they see someone on welfare having a beer or smoking a cigarette.  They expect 100% of their income to go to food.  It is absolutely ridiculous.  Why should a person spend 100% of their income on food.  Why are they not entitled to any form of creature comforts?

The right-wing thinks if you ever become homeless, then you should stay there. Obviously there’s a moral failing with you, and helping you out is only going to encourage you to keep on doing it…

That’s why they’re terrified of pretty much everything. If somebody blows up part of their city and they end up homeless, well tough luck for them, because there *shouldn’t be* any sort of help for them whatsoever. If their kids try drugs and end up screwing up one year of school, nobody should help him get back on track, so he won’t get into a good college and that means bus directly to Poortown! If POC start being able to have jobs, then that might mean they’ll take one they wanted/needed, and then THEY’ll be in the streets with no one to help them because THEY thought nobody should help anyone in need!

“Screw you, I got mine!” is a lifestyle which inevitably leads to deep seated paranoia about anything that might result in you being trampled by the other isolated individuals around you all rushing to get theirs while leaving you behind.

And now the state of Tennessee wants to limit the lottery winnings of poor people to a maximum of $600. So they can’t even try to win their way out of poverty.

The homeless people need cell phones so they can call 911 when the spoiled, teenage brats of the guys who criticized this man for having a phone try to beat the crap out of them. Several homeless people have been saved by their cell phones from such attacks, but unfortunately several others have been murdered.

And now the state of Tennessee wants to limit the lottery winnings of poor people to a maximum of $600. So they can’t even try to win their way out of poverty.

What the hell is the logic behind that move?

Duuuude I thought you were from Cleveland for some reason.

Meet you at the Trolley?

(OT)

Congratulations, Foxling, on your new job!  Best of luck.

(/OT)

No clue what the “logic” behind that move in Tennessee is. I just read it today in an article about the six states (including Tennessee) that are trying to pass legislation to prevent people who are using drugs from receiving welfare benefits. The author just put the lottery part in the article as evidence that Tennessee was taking it’s attacks on the poor one step farther than the other states.

It’s amazing how much infighting the non-rich classes do.  People get all fired up about someone on government assistance buying a cell phone, as if it’s some horrible waste of tax dollars, but then assume unchecked business subsidies of millions or billions of dollars is a-okay.  Compare the wasteful spending on private contractors who subcontract out business to secure a hefty profit at taxpayer expense to the abuse by welfare recipients of government assistance funding, and it blows my mind that what conservatives focus on is the hundred bucks some homeless guy spends PER YEAR on scratch tickets, versus the billions lost to corporations that aren’t required to prove how they spent the money allocated to them by Congress.

Accountability for the poor but not the rich seems to be the mantra of the conservative middle-class.

It must be exhausting living with so much hatred that someone got via a quarter of a half cent of your federal tax dollars some benefit that you didn’t get.

People expect the homeless to look unpresentable and not have any possessions to speak about so that they can wallow in their privilege. We further expect them to perform our version of what it means to be either poor or homeless.

According to these rules, poor people also have to be docile, friendly, never, ever angry, and must always be grateful for… something.  Any violation of these rules clearly demonstrates that poor people just deserve to be poor.

One of the ironies of all this is that it’s often much more expensive to live as many poor people do. Meals cost way more if you don’t have a place to cook, food costs way more if you have to buy it in tiny quantity at non-supermarket stores. Clothes wear out faster if you only have a small selection that you have to wear constantly.

So maybe the anger here is not so much that a cell phone is a sign of affluence as that it lets poor people participate in the same economy of low-cost communication as rich people, rather than begging access to phones or being soaked by the few remaining pay units.

Jesse, are you still in Ohio?? We could totally meet and get married! Please, tell me you’re at Case law school, it’s just up the street from me.

And now the state of Tennessee wants to limit the lottery winnings of poor people to a maximum of $600. So they can’t even try to win their way out of poverty.

Wow. That’s the worst thing I’ve heard since Domino’s refused to deliver pizzas to homeless people who Dumpster-dived to get enough coupons for a freebie. (Or Domino’s tried. They may have been shamed into rescinding that policy.)

I had this exact conversation the other day with a friend of mine who, sadly, was firmly in the “if they’re so poor they shouldn’t have cell phones” camp. Of course, come to find out that my friend had just bought a new Blackberry Storm, and more or less assumed that everyone else had something comparable. He simply cannot imagine life without a cell phone that has Internet access and plays MP3s or whatever else his phone does, and so he figures no one else can imagine living that way either.

So yeah, privilege, etc.

There’s one big difference between liberals and conservatives.  Conservatives want to punish everyone that they think is bad, even if it means punishing some good people in the process.  Liberals want to help people who need it, even if it means helping someone who doesn’t really need it. 

Take the example of volunteering at a soup kitchen.  Say 99 desperate, hungry people come in for soup, and one lazy, greedy person comes in for soup because they don’t want to spend money for food, as they are saving for a shiny new electronic gadget.  (I think this is pretty rare, but it’s hypothetical.)  Liberals would be willing to be taken advantage of by that one schemer in order to help out those 99 who really need it.  Conservatives would rather punish those 99 people and shut down the soup kitchen, just to punish that one selfish person.

I think it’s very rare that people will scheme to get free soup.  It’s not like soup kitchens offer gourmet food.  But a lot of conservatives seem to think that everyone is just trying to take advantage of their soup.  So anything that suggests that the person is not on the verge of starving to death makes them afraid they will be taken advantage of.

Where the hell do these people live that they think a cell phone is more expensive than an apartment?

Catgirl, in Boston, Food Not Bombs makes enough for all who want it ... if you are an office droid who can afford it, just throw a $5 or even a $10 donation in the jar and enjoy some wonderful vegetarian food and bread.  For $5 or $6 dollars, you are paying for two or three meals. If you are a homeless person who needs a hot meal or somebody who might not otherwise eat lunch, enjoy.

If they are just holding a mass-feeding, it is a lot nicer than only certain people lining up for food and certain others worrying about that.