Enemies:
Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.
The Dhammapada
I read somewhere: Thank your enemy for they teach you much about yourself.
I think that is true.
I have to be doing that now. I have to find away around my pride. Find a door that leads me out of pride, not into depression or submission, but into love, that can find a way to cope with this without feeling diminished.
Develop the mind of equilibrium.
You will always be getting praise and blame,
but do not let either affect the poise of the mind:
follow the calmness, the absence of pride.
Sutta Nipata
So this seems to be the crux.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
recall
Since the concessions took effect a month or two ago, I haven't been able to make all my payments. I'm short. It rankles me that a group of people would just consider cutting someone's pay by $350 a month and not think twice about it. Almost treat me as though I'd been stealing my wages all that time, when it was in my contract, legally.
ha. Contract. What does that mean anyway? They just took the money out. They claim it is additional money for health insurance. The Unions were so eager to make concessions they said yes to every one of Walker's bullshit ideas. But in the end, we still lost our collective bargaining, and I still lost $350 out of my check each month. (By the way, I only had $250 left over for food and bills as it was, now I am really pinched)
I have found an alternative lifestyle. I pick through garbage. I used to pick through the garbage for interesting, weird furniture people were throwing away, or something that just needed a little fixing. Sometimes I'd fix it and donate it to Goodwill or St. Vinnies just to keep it out of the landfill. But now it is a matter of survival. Here I am, a fully employed State worker, digging through trash for food. At least I have health insurance right?
You might say, "Why don't you sell your house?" Yes, good idea. I would like to, the problem with that is that is really doesn't get me very much. I had equity in my house a few years ago, even after the bubble burst, and I've been paying on it ever since, but it has lost over $20,000 in equity in the last three years. I am now negative. I owe more than my home is worth. I fatally decided to remodel it at the height of the bubble, getting a home equity loan. I was being conservative too, I only went to 80% of its value. But that quickly dwindled as the mortgage shit hit the fan.
So the selling of the house is pretty much out of the options at this time. There's the 'get a new job' option. Let's see, I'm 53, I am a graphic designer... where am I going to go? I don't have a Master's degree, but I have worked in the field for over 23 years. Doesn't matter, I need to spend a bunch of money and get that extra two years of college I don't have time to do or the money to pay for. So I could get a student loan I suppose... Then I have even MORE debt without guarantee of a good paying job. I could try to start my own business. hmmm. What would I do? Where would I get the capital? Do I have what it takes to do that? Do I have the energy to do that?
OK, so I'm trying to hang on for these past three years while my house has lost its value and I haven't really gotten a raise in four years. Then while our contract is still on the docket to be ratified, some creep Democrat from the South Milwaukee area doesn't get re-elected, so he's got a chip on his shoulder. So when the vote comes up with the majority of Democrats in the senate, he votes no to ratify our contracts. That left them open to be gutted by the newly elected Tea Party Governor Scott Walker to rip to shreds with the help of ALEC and the Koch Brothers. Legislation he called the "Budget Repair Bill" (You may have heard of it.)[by the way, the Senator's name that lost to Chris Larson was Plale.
note:{"Plale, who lost his seat in the September Dem primary, will serve as administrator of the Division of State Facilities, according to an e-mail sent to DOA staff this morning. The notice touted Plale's work on the State Building Commission.
Apparently it didn't tout the real reasons the Republicans like him -- Plale's work to kill the Clean Energy Jobs Act last year, his deciding vote, that prevented ratification of 17 labor contracts with state workers last month, his willingness to let special interests write their own regulations.}
So there we were. One creepy jerk-off Senator's vote and we're caught with our asses hanging out for little Scotty to spank. And were the boys a-droolin' too. They couldn't wait to cut our wages. FREEZE our wages. Make state workers sound like they were living so high on the hog. People around the stat that were in private sector jobs were thrilled to vote for a guy who claimed it was the state worker's fault that there was such a great deficit in the budget. But was it really? What had happened to all the money? And what were they doing demonizing teachers, touting privatized education. I must add here, that the reason private sector wages are stagnant and their health care so high is the erosion the past thirty years by the Republicans of wages and benefits. It isn't the state worker's fault, if anything the state unions have helped to keep wages up, forcing businesses to compete for workers. Now that was what Koch really wanted. They wanted that last bastion of 'decent' wages and benefits to fall by the wayside so they could enjoy even more erosion in the private sector, and with the EXTRA added bonus of funneling tax money into their greedy little hands via privatized energy companies, schools, roads, (you name it)... Do the little Tea Party people really think their taxes are going to go down?
I hate to break it to them. Their taxes are going to remain where they are. And in addition to that, they aren't going to own anything public anymore. No schools, no parks, no roads. Regulation will be out the window, and it will be fee after fee in addition to paying taxes right to them. It's a win/win for the Kochs and their ilk!
OK. Back to the initial rant. I am a single mom. I work full-time. I went to college. I have worked since I was 15, I am now 53. The last ten years, things have been getting harder and harder. I was hoping, as I got more near retirement that things would get a little easier. Thanks to these crazy greedy people taking over our public institutions and banks, it has gotten harder and harder. To the point where right now, I feel like I am an illness or a job loss away from losing everything.
That's not the way it was meant to be in America. America has lost her way.
I love the Occupy movement at first, but now it is getting spun down in the media so it is tainted. But it is still the same for me. It is about sitting down and now putting up with the corruption anymore. It is finding a voice. It is finding unity. A wave. I really hope it doesn't diffuse. I need that wave more than ever now. I need that voice, that spirit. I'm sorry that there are men like Jeffery Plale that will sell-out a state for their own personal gain. I'm sorry that he feels nothing for the lives he has put in jeopardy.
ha. Contract. What does that mean anyway? They just took the money out. They claim it is additional money for health insurance. The Unions were so eager to make concessions they said yes to every one of Walker's bullshit ideas. But in the end, we still lost our collective bargaining, and I still lost $350 out of my check each month. (By the way, I only had $250 left over for food and bills as it was, now I am really pinched)
I have found an alternative lifestyle. I pick through garbage. I used to pick through the garbage for interesting, weird furniture people were throwing away, or something that just needed a little fixing. Sometimes I'd fix it and donate it to Goodwill or St. Vinnies just to keep it out of the landfill. But now it is a matter of survival. Here I am, a fully employed State worker, digging through trash for food. At least I have health insurance right?
You might say, "Why don't you sell your house?" Yes, good idea. I would like to, the problem with that is that is really doesn't get me very much. I had equity in my house a few years ago, even after the bubble burst, and I've been paying on it ever since, but it has lost over $20,000 in equity in the last three years. I am now negative. I owe more than my home is worth. I fatally decided to remodel it at the height of the bubble, getting a home equity loan. I was being conservative too, I only went to 80% of its value. But that quickly dwindled as the mortgage shit hit the fan.
So the selling of the house is pretty much out of the options at this time. There's the 'get a new job' option. Let's see, I'm 53, I am a graphic designer... where am I going to go? I don't have a Master's degree, but I have worked in the field for over 23 years. Doesn't matter, I need to spend a bunch of money and get that extra two years of college I don't have time to do or the money to pay for. So I could get a student loan I suppose... Then I have even MORE debt without guarantee of a good paying job. I could try to start my own business. hmmm. What would I do? Where would I get the capital? Do I have what it takes to do that? Do I have the energy to do that?
OK, so I'm trying to hang on for these past three years while my house has lost its value and I haven't really gotten a raise in four years. Then while our contract is still on the docket to be ratified, some creep Democrat from the South Milwaukee area doesn't get re-elected, so he's got a chip on his shoulder. So when the vote comes up with the majority of Democrats in the senate, he votes no to ratify our contracts. That left them open to be gutted by the newly elected Tea Party Governor Scott Walker to rip to shreds with the help of ALEC and the Koch Brothers. Legislation he called the "Budget Repair Bill" (You may have heard of it.)[by the way, the Senator's name that lost to Chris Larson was Plale.
note:{"Plale, who lost his seat in the September Dem primary, will serve as administrator of the Division of State Facilities, according to an e-mail sent to DOA staff this morning. The notice touted Plale's work on the State Building Commission.
Apparently it didn't tout the real reasons the Republicans like him -- Plale's work to kill the Clean Energy Jobs Act last year, his deciding vote, that prevented ratification of 17 labor contracts with state workers last month, his willingness to let special interests write their own regulations.}
So there we were. One creepy jerk-off Senator's vote and we're caught with our asses hanging out for little Scotty to spank. And were the boys a-droolin' too. They couldn't wait to cut our wages. FREEZE our wages. Make state workers sound like they were living so high on the hog. People around the stat that were in private sector jobs were thrilled to vote for a guy who claimed it was the state worker's fault that there was such a great deficit in the budget. But was it really? What had happened to all the money? And what were they doing demonizing teachers, touting privatized education. I must add here, that the reason private sector wages are stagnant and their health care so high is the erosion the past thirty years by the Republicans of wages and benefits. It isn't the state worker's fault, if anything the state unions have helped to keep wages up, forcing businesses to compete for workers. Now that was what Koch really wanted. They wanted that last bastion of 'decent' wages and benefits to fall by the wayside so they could enjoy even more erosion in the private sector, and with the EXTRA added bonus of funneling tax money into their greedy little hands via privatized energy companies, schools, roads, (you name it)... Do the little Tea Party people really think their taxes are going to go down?
I hate to break it to them. Their taxes are going to remain where they are. And in addition to that, they aren't going to own anything public anymore. No schools, no parks, no roads. Regulation will be out the window, and it will be fee after fee in addition to paying taxes right to them. It's a win/win for the Kochs and their ilk!
OK. Back to the initial rant. I am a single mom. I work full-time. I went to college. I have worked since I was 15, I am now 53. The last ten years, things have been getting harder and harder. I was hoping, as I got more near retirement that things would get a little easier. Thanks to these crazy greedy people taking over our public institutions and banks, it has gotten harder and harder. To the point where right now, I feel like I am an illness or a job loss away from losing everything.
That's not the way it was meant to be in America. America has lost her way.
I love the Occupy movement at first, but now it is getting spun down in the media so it is tainted. But it is still the same for me. It is about sitting down and now putting up with the corruption anymore. It is finding a voice. It is finding unity. A wave. I really hope it doesn't diffuse. I need that wave more than ever now. I need that voice, that spirit. I'm sorry that there are men like Jeffery Plale that will sell-out a state for their own personal gain. I'm sorry that he feels nothing for the lives he has put in jeopardy.
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