I wrote this after some debate with a friend over on the Rott about how well the Social Programs we have in America are working.
You can read the entire exchange here:
Debate between Cissnarl5.7 and the ITW DJ on the Rott
This is more or less just random musings but the debate got me reflecting on events in my own life and just why is it poverty is still an issue in America?
As I reflected, it dawned on me that, by any measure of the word, I was at one point “poor”.
That brings me to this one simple statement:
Poverty exists in America for one reason, the government perpetuates it through nanny state handouts and overbearing legislation Period.
Let’s take a look at how one becomes “poor” and how one can overcome even some of the most difficult set of circumstances in life and still archive success.
Being born poor, or even if it is self inflicted, it matters not, you call the shots in your life, and until you shake off the blinders that society and those idiots in DC have slapped upon you, you might as well consider yourself a slave.
White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, it doesn’t matter… DC and our victim addled society is color blind, make no mistake, they will keep that boot on your neck no matter who you are, and at the same time tell you “Were here to help” We’ll take care of you”…Horse Apples!
The only thing the U.S. government, since the days of the liberal darling FDR, has done for anyone, is too turn entire generations into boot-licking beggars looking for their next hand out…. If welfare and public assistance was working, explain to me why there are several entire generations on the public dole? Does any one not see the irony of all this? Poverty should of been erased years ago in the US and it is still there..why?
OK, I’m wandering and I have to circle back here, lets look at how does someone get “poor”? It’s easier than you think trust me, this day and age, a few wrong choices, and you will find yourself on the streets or close to it…sad as it is, it is the facts of life.
I was raised in a solidly middle class home and with almost limitless choices, but as I ended up as an adult, I squandered a lot of it.
I’ll freely admit; For me “poverty” was mostly a monster of my own creation, bad choices and bad calls. Faulty thinking, and for lack of a better term “leftist” thought process thinking someone owed me something in life are a sure fire way to make a mess of your life in short order. At least it was for me.
I married way too young, and divorced with one child “it wasn’t working out” (asshat very liberal 22 year old dumps his wife and kid so he can go chase other skirts and party is the summary) so there’s one child support payment on a lower middle class military income.
Turned right around & not learning my lesson the FIRST time… I did it all over again, With a child out of wedlock….oddly enough true to my conservative upbringings I kept insisting, and we finally married. Bad move.
6 months later much to my surprise she pulled the plug in the face of me choosing to stay in the military. I was pretty much devastated.
During the divorce, I faced a very liberal Northern VA judge and he nailed my a$$ to the wall…at one point with my child support payments, I lived on 400 dollars a month. I kid you not…I made more working for minimum wage at 16 than I did as an E-5 in the military with almost 10 years of service.
How could that happen in today’s world to a veteran no less…easy, the child support laws are vicious feminist driven pieces of legislation, damn me if you will for that statement, it is true and I and millions of other non custodial parents are living proof. (WARNING take your liberal knee jerk response elsewhere, this is one issue I don’t negotiate on you post here and get on a high horse about how women and children “deserve” to take 60%-80% of a persons income and I will first cuss your stupid ass out, and then I will smoke your post…you have been warned).
As far as the judge was concerned and since by now I lived on a ship, I had a “roof “over my head (which was a navy ship), food to eat (the mess decks), and that was good enough. My money was to go to the child and she walked away owing nothing on any of our bills.
I had suddenly, because of my own stupid choices, immaturity and with a heaping handout from a liberal court, become the “working poor”.
Sadly, and because of the situation I was in, in the end, I left the military in search of a better paycheck, and luck was with me. I ended up going with a defense contractor.
15.50 an hour back then at the height of the Clinton years, didn’t go very far, and today despite what Dubya and his cronies bluster about, it goes even less far. But after the Child Support, SSI and taxes at the single rate were withheld, I was now up to a whopping 900 or so a month net income. That’s less than 12k a year or actually WELL below the poverty level back then.
To continue, I moonlighted at a livestock feed store to make ends meet. I might pull in 1300 on a very good month working 80 plus hours a week.
Welcome to the “poor” side of town…you’ve just arrived.
Right up to the end of 1998 I lived in a ramshackle trailer, ate a lot of hotdogs and ramen noodles and saved my pennies so I could fill my tank, jump in my 10 year old truck, send a prayer up, and hope that it’d make it all the way up to either DC or Ohio to see either of my two kids.
Finally after almost 4 years of this, and pretty much exhausted from it all, I headed out of the country in 98 to get a leg up on things. To be honest those were decent years, I worked like a mule, but I didn’t have time to party, I had a lot of time to learn about who I was and where I wanted to go, and in short those years were the anvil that the person I am today was hammered out on. Hard times make strong backs as my grandmother used to say….
I had learned that expats can exempt the first 80,000 on their taxes and that was a huge break for me, so off to a tiny island I went in the pacific where I tracked Satellites, I did that for 4 years, and From there it was off to the Middle East where I am to this day.
Mid point through this, in 2001 and just seeing some serious light at the end of the tunnel I got hit by yet another trainwreck, this time not one of my own making, and I was diagnosed with Cancer.
To battle back from Cancer…I spent 8 months fighting it. I survived, but I was seriously set back by medical bills and lost time from work. …….Here we go again.
Again I made hard choices, I had by this point lost a lot of years with my children, I was gone all the time and frankly I was getting pretty sick of it, but I had more work to do, so I headed to Kuwait after a short stay in the US in 2002. I arrived here just as the invasion of Iraq was in full swing early 2003.
And here I am today, so this is a snapshot historical summary .
Looking back over the last now almost 10 years, and where I am now, married to a great gal, my own home that I love, my car, all that you see on this blog, and a good paying job…..I’ll say this…It’s been a long long road and there have been many pitfalls and sacrifices along the way.
It wasn’t always easy, and like a lot of “poor” folk I had long periods of just out right rage at my situation, but I never stole anything, I never drank myself to death, I never hit the pot or crack pipe looking to “escape”, and I never looked for a fast buck. I simply put my head down and I persevered, I kept pushing no matter how hard it got and when all was darkness I still kept on going.
So what’s my point? In summary, I don’t buy into the hornswaggle argument that there is no way to better your life, OR more to the point…PEOPLE NEED THE GOVERNMENT TO HELP THEM…I don’t care what color or race you are, or what things you have done in your life to damage it, there are ways to overcome. ”Fate” is for suckers.
Speaking of race, I have a friend who is Black and an immigrant to boot, his family wasn’t rich or white or even middle class, and he faced the same hurdles and prejudices as anyone in the minority column, he’s very successful and he isn’t making rap albums or selling crack…he’s proof positive that poverty can be beaten by ANYONE should they so choose to work and make the effort to lift the chains of the government from their necks…
That the government must provide for the poor, that the handouts must continue…is complete hogwash, to the poor I say, keep on allowing Uncle Sam to keep that boot on your neck via a welfare check or foodstamps, or whatever public assistance you are getting, and you aint ever gonna go a damn place. You will stay poor. Trust me there’s 50 years of failed social experiments by the US Government to back that little assertion up.
That’s the unvarnished truth, because no matter what you make on public assistance, it gets gobbled up before you have any chance at all to do anything constructive with it. You are simply like a rat caught in a trap.
Some will question “yeah but what if they screwed up and cant join the military like you did, what if they have a record?! You had a lot more chances….You’re overlooking a lot of people!”
Did I? No one handed me a “chance” as people like to call it….I made my own. And I squandred lots of them in stupidity…
Honestly, You might never reach the same places I did, I wont blow smoke up your skirt and say you will, but you can reach some semblance of security and of respect.
In fact, I know a man with no less than 3 felony counts to include KIDNAPPING, who has done his time and is now working and owns a home, he is a father and a provider, and he like many “poor” kids made a horrendous mistake and paid the price for it but he worked his ass off and overcame it. He never set one foot inot the Military because he was in prison at 18.
And of course some will point out “you’re being hypocritical… you WORK for the government”, I do by proxy this is true, the DOD pays my company to come over here and take care of things for the troops, we do it and we get paid, but if not in a DOD funded company I would most likely be working someplace else outside of the US all the same, people like that miss the point entirely….. I’m over here because I want to be, and because I do not agree with the way our country is being run.
Eventually I will come back, that much is certain, but when is any-one’s guess, because with the mess the Government has made of things over there the last 20 years, I’m truthfully in no hurry. Why should my hard earned tax dollars go to DC and support things I fully 100% disagree with?
In an weird way I do it too because, if the US Government is going to shackle those of us that pay the majority of the taxes, as well as the people on welfare, via insane policies, feel good programs that do nothing to raise them out of the poverty ranks, and waste billions of dollars of OUR money, on stupid programs that have no charter in the U.S. Constitution, I will take every dime I can, and laugh all the way to the bank doing it…Evil “Conservative” that I am… 
….thanks for reading.
[454monte-the-author]
