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dland

Casinos, welfare and change.

(06.28.2005 - 2:46 pm)

I watched in childlike anticipation as the brightly colored rotating fruit spun in opposite directions and then land on a cherry, two cherries, and then a white seven. That would have been a decent spin had it been a three coin bet, but mine wasn�t. It was the last quarter of the last twenty dollar bill that I was willing to gamble. It didn�t win a thing, just swallowed my last quarter and made that casino machine noise that taunts you so. I grunted in disgust and picked up my strawberry daiquiri wrapped in the casino�s napkin. It was emblazoned with a silly bird of some sort, a parrot I think, wearing absurd sunglasses. They were the kind of sunglasses that Tom Cruise wore in �Risky Business�. I thought a moment about how all the girls still go crazy when he slides across that hard wood floor in his sock feet wearing only his underwear. I doubt seriously if I did that scene it would have the same effect on anyone. I grimaced and took a long sip of the concoction, then absent mindedly began to stir the whipped cream into the shaved ice and take notice of my surroundings and the other players around me.
Seated next to me playing another quarter machine was an elderly gentleman that had at least seven decades under his belt. Across from him playing was a lady in a �Rascal� Scooter. She kept getting angry with the machine for not paying off and would use her scooter chair to ram into the machine. I suppose in her mind she was punishing the slot machine. The realization soon took me that the vast majority of people in the casino were in their sunset years. The remainders were blue collar working class people not much different than me, except for one big noticeable difference. Many of these people seemed to have acute urgency about them. It was as if they needed to win, no, had to win.
I began to walk around the casino floor, and everywhere I looked, it was the same expression nearly. When I go to the casino, I expect to loose. I count out a measure of money, a minor amount by some counts, and that�s all I will spend, no matter what. It�s entertainment to me, that�s all. There�s no difference in my mind really from a slot machine than from a Pac Man game in my mind. I will grant you, the slot machine might enable you periodically to play more slot machines, but I digress from my story line.
The gentleman seated next to me when I was playing had an envelope protruding from the back pocket of a pair of ancient and well worn herring bone pants. The envelope had a recognizable return address on it if you�ve ever received a tax refund. It said United States Treasury. It�s possible he was spending his tax return in the slot machines, but somehow, I doubt it. I really and truly feel the old man was spending his monthly allowance gambling. I began to wonder about the old guy. Did he need to gamble to make ends meet, or did he have an age old gambling problem? I watched his frail old hands sink quarter after quarter into the machine and I wondered if he had food in his cabinets. I wondered what kind of home he had or if he even had one. I suppose I could take for granted he does, since one cannot receive stipends unless one has a permanent physical address, but who knows, would this old guy sleep on the beach tonight without food?
He wasn�t part of one of those old folk�s casino tour bus trips. Those people are easily spotted a mile off with their touristy clothes, brightly colored name tags and virtual-reality-goggle-type-sunglasses. This old guy wasn�t any part of that. His shoe leather was so worn that he had slid cardboard between his sock feet and the inside of his old shoe. I haven�t seen anyone do that since my own extreme poverty stricken days in the Mississippi Delta where brown brogan boots were a luxury and you kept your hair cut off because that kept the bugs out of it.
Thinking about all this and watching this old man and all these people wanting, needing, having to win so badly suddenly washed depression over me as bad as I have ever experienced. I actually became sick. I�m still not over it actually.
I love my country. I love my country with all my heart and soul, and I was born on Flag Day. I served my country honorably in the United States Marine Corps and proudly fought for her. Still, there�s something wrong here in the wealthiest country in the world if there are people without housing, education and medical benefits. The looks on the faces of those old people in the casinos will prove it to you the next time you go. They are spending money they should have left in the cookie jar for the months rent or groceries.
Now before anyone zips off an educational message to me about how gambling is addictive and it�s a disease and all, I know and understand that. I have a family member that succumbed to that monster. I watch him play and there is a very real difference in that player�s posture and attitude while they play. This is completely different. When they completely loose, they go through denial, and in their minds they actually believe the machine or the dealer was just about to pay off. Sometimes they conceive conspiracy, or really anything at all to justify not where the money has gone to them, but why they didn�t have a chance yet to win. An addict was always, always, just about to win just before s/he ran out of money. So yes, I understand that concept, and no, that�s not what I�m talking about here. It�s a sad thing as well, as is heroine addiction. But addiction is a topic I will save for another day.
Hunger, and the fear of hunger, can be just as much a driving force in nature as is addiction. With that said, it was with mixed emotion that I received the news of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. Granted, I saw, as you probably did, abuse of the old system. I can recall a lady in front of me in the grocery store once paying her bill with food stamps. Within the foodstuffs lies a sack of dog food. The clerk correctly informs her that she may not pay for the dog food with her food stamps. The lady then proceeds to throw a terrible fit, causing a huge scene. Talking overly loud so no one within earshot can miss it, she says, �Fine then. Junior, take this dog food back and get twenty pounds of ground beef. The damned dog can eat hamburger this week!� Then she looked at all of us staring at her and she said, �Hey, it�s your system, I�m just working it.� She said while pointed diamond ring laden fingers all around at us, as if we were the �enemy� or something. She and her son then loaded the three buggies of groceries into a new Cadillac. As luck or fate would have it, that event happened in the month of May. I had just sent recently sent away the largest check ever to the IRS for my taxes. I shouldn�t have to say this at this point, but I will anyway. I was pissed off beyond belief, standing there with my bologna and generic items while she carted away the best of the best in the store! She was eating steak every night and we were having bologna because I had just sent away $15,000 to the government apparently to help support her! I was livid.

On August 22, 1996 President Clinton signed into law H.R. 3734 - the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.
To participate in the Food Stamp Program:
� Households may have no more than $2,000 in countable resources, such as a bank account ($3,000 if at least one person in the household is age 60 or older, or is disabled). Certain resources are not counted, such as a home and lot. Special rules are used to determine the resource value of vehicles owned by household members.
� The gross monthly income of most households must be 130 percent or less of the Federal poverty guidelines ($1,698 per month for a family of three in most places, effective Oct. 1, 2004 through Sept. 30, 2005). Gross income includes all cash payments to the household, with a few exceptions specified in the law or the program regulations.
� Net monthly income must be 100 percent or less of Federal poverty guidelines ($1,306 per month for a household of three in most places, effective Oct. 1, 2004 through Sept. 30, 2005). Net income is figured by adding all of a household's gross income, and then taking a number of approved deductions for child care, some shelter costs and other expenses. Households with an elderly or disabled member are subject only to the net income test.
� Most able-bodied adult applicants must meet certain work requirements.
� All household members must provide a Social Security number or apply for one.
I like to envision that at the grocery store lady on August 22, 1996. I wonder if she was livid.
Our country is so very slow to make and then to accept change. There are so very many needed programs that do not exist. Whilst that lady and her family consumed the intended food and intentions for the truly poor, the poor suffered for it, and continue to do so. They are forgotten and suffering now under overpasses and under bridges. They live in cardboard boxes and in burned out buildings. They have no address, no social security card that they can find, and no future that they can remember. They are prisoners to misfortune and evil deeds. Bad reminders to those of us as we drive by in our air conditioned cars that our system isn�t perfect, that some slip through the cracks. The fact that even one single person isn�t sleeping in a bed tonight, and hasn�t a hot meal, should be completely unacceptable. It should be unacceptable to you, to me, to everyone. Yet, it goes on.
This country wastes so much. The reform act of 1996 was a great first step, but we cannot stop there. We must continue with reform. The tax code is archaic, too long and geared toward the ultra-wealthy. While flat tax is not the answer, perhaps we should look at another graduated system. A system is needed where basic necessities such as food, housing and even education are not taxed at all. Part of our countries problem is that our education system is top heavy. The poor cannot truly choose colleges. If you listen to the hype about open benefits, you are an easy target, just think about it. The wealthy can afford to send their kids wherever they choose, housing not is a problem, and all the necessities and anything else they could possibly need or want is available. The parent probably attended there and therefore has a head start in the political game that will no doubt continue on throughout the child�s life.
The poor child�s story is altogether different. She or he will be filing assistance forms since grade 11. If the athletic card doesn�t pay off, then it�s more than likely community college for two years, so she or he can stay at home while attending, then transferring to a senior college that will accept the community college�s course hours only to find that about 25% of them are useless. Now all of this while working a night job at Wal-Mart or a Wendy�s in order to pay for gas for the grandmother�s car and text books and spending money. After full night shifts working the drive through covered in French fry grease do you really thing this kid is going to want to study? So I ask you, who is getting the better education? Have I made my point?
Our medical system, while having the best doctors and hospitals in the world, is no longer run by doctors. It is run by administrators whom are merely puppets that have the hands of the insurance companies up their asses. These administrators are gutless wonders that have no brains whatsoever and by the miracle that is ventriloquism are able to speak at all.
Doctors today are afraid. That�s a simple statement, but that�s a simple fact. Far too many have been sued by people for stupid frivolous reasons. Don�t get me wrong here, if a doctor is truly negligent, and grossly in error, then by all means, let us punish him, and give compensation to the patient, or God forbid, the patient�s survivors. If he is just trying to do his job, then let us leave him alone to heal the sick and not worry about the legal system. �For God�s sake, Jim, I�m a Doctor, not a lawyer!� would be what Bones would say from Star Trek.
I hear a lot of comments from people about Canada�s medical system. I�m not so sure that the answer is there either. If their public medical system is so great, why do so many Quebecois pour south to exchange money and pay cash for medical services?
You see, I don�t really have any answers, only a lot of questions. But reform is based on that people. We must be willing to question our system and not blindly follow. Even as a Marine, an enlisted marine, I learned the age old adage in boot camp that if it moves, salutes it, if it doesn�t, paint it. That�s amusing, and serves as a message; still I learned that there is a time to question authority.
At Parris Island, several training platoons ahead of me, a drill instructor suffering from an ill fated marriage had several drinks too many at the Non Commissioned Officer�s Club. Obviously drunk, his fellow instructors allowed him to leave alone. That was mistake one. He then proceeded to his barracks where he awoke his sleeping platoon and forced them into combat gear. A forced march of many miles ensued ending with the drunken drill instructor marching his entire platoon into the marsh where nearly all perished by drowning, unable to save themselves with full combat gear that deep within the muck of the marsh and slowly sinking into the water. That was mistake two. Being new recruits and scared to do or say anything other than what the drill instructor ordered, the platoon followed blindly a very obviously drunken Sergeant. That was their third strike, and for many of them, the very last mistake they would ever make.
After that event we were taught that there are, in fact, times in which to question authority. Although there are few times while in basic training that one might come to do so, that was once that someone should have questioned authority.
As citizens of the greatest country on the planet ( yes Canadians, I know that rubs you the wrong way, but if you don�t show pride in your homeland, whether that be the US, Mexico, Canada, or any other country, then I think less of you for it, understand now?), we must be able to seek out change. We must be willing to accept that change and prepare for future generations, instead of leaving complicated problems. Many people disagree with President Bush on his plan for Social Security abolition, but by the time it went to congress, it got people to stand up and notice, and take a voice. Now there are several versions of reform on the table, some of which may possibly work, one of which does not involve the abolition of the social security system as a whole. It has the President�s tentative passage at this point. Maybe he didn�t have all the answers, but he forced a lot of people including both houses to take a stand and do something, instead of merely talking about it. So now who is stupid?
Change is inevitable. Some change is good. Some change is bad. Without trying to sound so overly simple, we learn by doing. This is still a young country by some comparisons, and it is still far from perfect. Will it ever be perfect? I seriously doubt that, but one can hope that the day will come when people are not hungry and sleeping under overpasses and in boxes. One can hope it will change for the better, when old people don�t need to get three red white and blue sevens with their monthly allotment checks. One can hope. I can always hope, and, I can vote.
Educate yourself America, there�s a whole country surrounding you.

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