Don't forget Mr. Klinghoffer misuses the word conservative to score political points. To be conservative means to oppose change and prefer the status quo and to be traditional in style and manner. He is a controversial author trying to market and sell certain products and not a theologian in any sense of the word. I would not expect he would ever want to agree with anyone. You can only sell controversy in his little world.

Posted by: steve | June 30, 2008 4:26 PM

Mr. Wallis, you are absolutely correct that Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and to love our enemies. That is why I think you're first paragraph diminishes the message in the rest of your column...you're comment about the "worst case scenario" was just mean spirited and devoid of the love of Christ. I commend you for the rest of the column...but I think you owe Mr. Klinghoffer an apology.

Posted by: Frank Pianki | June 30, 2008 4:52 PM

"Wealth CAN be a sign of God's blessings, God often blesses those who are obedient, but that of course does not mean that all who are wealthy are obedient (as I'm sure Klinghoffer would agree).

The issue of whether SOME poor people are poor because of their sin is an important one to acknowledge, though, and the Bible most definitely speaks of those deserving poverty because of laziness."

Even if it were true that wealth and morality were linked, you admit with your qualifications that we cannot reliably identify the linkage. Wealth MIGHT be a sign of God's blessing, but it isn't always, so we cannot know when it is and isn't. In other words, if, counter to your argument, wealth and morality were not linked, but their relationship was simply governed by chance, then the world MIGHT look exactly the same as it does. So, yes, it is logically possible that personal wealth is an outward sign of blessing, but no, there is no warrant for believing that it is.

Posted by: NotBuyingIt | June 30, 2008 6:17 PM

Jim Wallis,

Thank you for your insightful commentary. I'll take Jesus' Gospel over the gospel according to David Klinghoffer any day.

Posted by: Quetzal | June 30, 2008 7:00 PM

Interesting ,

I know of no people more opposed to war then those who have fought in them The same ones that for ideals and values Jim Wallis appears not to understand , stand in the gap for the rest of us back seat quarterbacks when danger comes our way .

Posted by: Ron | June 30, 2008 8:07 PM

I have to agree with the one or two people who pointed out that Jim Wallis could have been more charitable in his response and certain comments seemed unnecessarily mean-spirited, though I agree with the rest of it.

I also find some sympathy with the idea that charity is not charity if it is forced and the question of whether or not the Bible would support state-sponsored welfare systems. Perosnally, I agree with the programs, but I struggle with the Biblical argument for involuntary charity.

Posted by: Brian | June 30, 2008 9:08 PM

That is: when the Bible speaks of "poverty," how does that apply to what defines poverty in America today? Most of those under the poverty line in the US are well-fed and have a roof over their heads. This is better off than the middle class in Biblical times. Wallis simply makes an appeal to authority to dismiss this issue.

However, they often don't have access to good schools, good jobs or social opportunities to change their state. Any attempts to change them fall under the general category of "socialism."

Even if it were true that wealth and morality were linked, you admit with your qualifications that we cannot reliably identify the linkage. Wealth MIGHT be a sign of God's blessing, but it isn't always, so we cannot know when it is and isn't.

Which is why I said what I did above.

Wallis's witness has surely been compromised through the vitriol and disrespect shown in this posting.

Excuse me, but since when does saying that someone's basic premise is flawed become vitriolic? When it's a non-conservative doing it to a conservative?

Posted by: Rick | June 30, 2008 10:59 PM

Klinghoffer asks:

"Why the free pass to Edwards?"

A reasonable question. No response.

You also don't contend with Deuteronomy 11:13-17. It is not as though Klinghoffer wrote the passage.

In fact, you don't contend with any of his arguments at all. Mr. Klinghoffer has not, um, offered the most cogent defense of conservative political policy, but he won this debate hands down by any objective measure.

"Excuse me, but since when does saying that someone's basic premise is flawed become vitriolic? "

That isn't what was vitriolic about this posting.

Posted by: kevin s. | June 30, 2008 11:07 PM

Mr. Klinghoffer has not, um, offered the most cogent defense of conservative political policy, but he won this debate hands down by any objective measure.

That by definition is a subjective statement.

That isn't what was vitriolic about this posting.

You wish.

Twice as many US service personel were killed in foreign countries during the Clinton Adm than in the 7.5 years of GWB. So - I guess being at war has made us more safe - humm?

Barack Obama said, "I'm not opposed to all wars -- just dumb ones." Like Iraq.

Posted by: Rick | June 30, 2008 11:51 PM

I've just stumbled upon the whole series of back and forth discussions. They proved interesting enough, but I wonder if the short lengths of the posts kept them from going as deep as I would have liked, and perhaps the authors themselves would have liked. It seemed to me like a bunch of generalities were bandied about in the early essays which only started to get sorted out later. The politics of the Bible might be conservative as Klinghoffer suggests, but not in the same sense as we know it today and certainly not in the same sense as we see it practiced today on the political stage. I think we need to make a sharper distinction between the definition of Conservatism that Klinghoffer offers, and the Conservative movement today which incorporates plenty more than just religious conservatives.

Posted by: V | July 1, 2008 2:38 AM

On poverty, Jim can't "get over" Klinghoffer's argument that much of what the Bible says about poverty doesn't apply in the US because our poor are relatively well-off.

Because it's a poor argument; Klinghoffer seems to say that we shouldn't bother with improving their state -- because his side has the authority and he doesn't want to give it up. It's not about comparing the poor here with the poor in other countries; here they still don't have as much as an opportunity to change their lives for the better and any uprising will be threatening to the established social order (conservatives will call it "socialism").

I think we need to make a sharper distinction between the definition of Conservatism that Klinghoffer offers, and the Conservative movement today which incorporates plenty more than just religious conservatives.

The problem is that, historically, there is virtually none because conservative Christians were recruited for the modern conservative movement back in the late 1970s. Furthermore, it brooks no dissent; its leaders demanded unquestioned loyalty to the cause without considering the ramifications; that's a sign of weakness which was exposed by George W. Bush.

I've made it my own little rule: if I don't see someone kneeling in front of something, burning incense, slaughtering animals, or making creepy web videos, I'm not calling it idolatry.

I don't think that's a good rule because idolatry has different manifestations today; it's about focus. One of the top Bible teachers in my area said he dreamed of becoming a father; however, he confessed that the LORD convicted him that it had replaced Him. (He never did have his own children but raised two step-children.)

Posted by: Rick | July 1, 2008 7:58 AM

"There's nothing wrong at all with people getting rich except when they jimmy the political and economic system to keep them rich and the poor poor"

I've always wanted to know how one jimmies the political and economic systems. I've always been looking for someone to blame for being not being rich. I always thought I wasn't rich because I was too young, not smart enough, and not hard working enough. Now, I know that its rich people that have been holdin' me down.

Posted by: DITE | July 1, 2008 8:36 AM

"Because it's a poor argument; Klinghoffer seems to say that we shouldn't bother with improving their state"

Of course, that isn't what he said, so you are forced to suggest that this is what he "seems" to say. Either way, if it is a poor argument, Wallis should easily have been able to take it apart.

"I don't think that's a good rule because idolatry has different manifestations today; "

Disagreeing with Jim Wallis, for example.

Posted by: kevin s. | July 1, 2008 11:43 AM

Of course, that isn't what he said, so you are forced to suggest that this is what he "seems" to say. Either way, if it is a poor argument, Wallis should easily have been able to take it apart.

Oh, Wallis certinly can and did but Klinghoffer simply refused to listen, which is the point and why Wallis terminated the discussion. People like that want only control and fear being challenged because it might cost them something, most importantly the belief that they're ultimately right.

Disagreeing with Jim Wallis, for example.

I was thinking along the lines of disagreeing with conservatives.

Posted by: Rick | July 1, 2008 12:26 PM

"One reason the GOP went down hard two years ago was the discovery of an elaborate -- and blatantly illegal -- lobbying system that catered only to Republicans."

And so what do we do with the present system, which caters mostly to Democrats? Beyond lobbying, a couple of prominent Democrats got sweetheart deals from Countrywide's CEO. Is that acceptable, in your view? I smell an "irrelevant" coming on.

But yes, the wealthy do leverage lobbysists in an attempt to influence outcomes, and have for quite some time. The best way to counter their influence is not to rely on ads, press releases, but rather your own ideology and instincts about how a particular candidate will implement same.

Posted by: kevin s. | July 1, 2008 1:09 PM

I would caution that using ideology is not the most useful, in terms of predicting beneficial outcomes.

It is tempting to use it because it offers, without delivering, an exemption from personal responsibility.

It might sound noble, loyal and proud to hew to ideology - in this case some brand of "conservative" ideology, if such a thing could even be said to exist, since real conservatism is experiential and based on and biased towards past experience, which is always enlarging as time continues.

However, ideologies always end up meaning reductionist preconceptions that aren't tolerant to dissent, regardless of the validities of the challenges.

Ideology is most associated with adherents of communism, socialism, fascism or objectivism, who forced their view of reality through a sieve that ended disposing of reason that wasn't accounted for within the ideology.

Ideology trumps everything else and compels adherence to its precepts and ends up imbuing that unthinking loyalty with a kind of false nobility and purity that leads adherents to think of themselves as acting for some higher principle - which can end up trying to justify a whole lot of bad means in an attempt to get to their mythical and in the end unobtainable good end.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | July 1, 2008 1:34 PM

Interesting points made here. I too am glad for the separation of church and state.

Posted by: Nathan | July 1, 2008 3:32 PM

Disagreeing with Jim Wallis, for example. Posted by: kevin s.

Now that was a nice thing to say, wasn't it?

Posted by: JamesM | July 1, 2008 6:00 PM

Does anyone have any advice for debating with your parents who align their politics with that of Mr. Klinghoffer. My mother and stepfather believe they are conservatives because they are value voters. I too, consider myself a "value voter," but am therefore a liberal. How do you argue with you parents that poverty and war are moral issues (and often linked to their moral agenda-abortion)? Does anyone have a list of the 2,000+ verses that talk about poverty?

Also, in a political discussion, I recently asked some Christians whether they would rather eliminate abortion or overturn Roe vs. Wade. To my suprise, their answer was the latter. In my opinion that is rendering what is God's to Caesar. No wonder nothing ever gets accomplished on this front.

Posted by: Nathan Mahlum | July 1, 2008 6:31 PM

"If you think they have it so good, why don't you give your job to someone who needs it and cash in on the free ride."

The thing is they can have a job without me giving up my job. Employment is not like musical chairs. I teach English in Korea. We could use more English teachers. Tell this "someone who needs (a job)" to apply! Oh, they have to have a college degree...and be willing to move to Korea.

"be sure to let us know how much fun it is to carry all your documents around from office to office filling out the same detailed information in the hopes that you won't be disqualified by some arbitrary standard of poverty."

I'm embarrassed to say that I have been on the dole before. I was on unemployment for a few months until God made me realize how lazy I had become. There was no carrying papers from office to office. I applied online, answered about six questions a week online, and the money showed up in my checking account. Again, I'm not against safety nets, but my experience with government assistance has been safety nets become safety hammocks.

"But don't overstay your welcome. You only get two years worth of lifetime benefits in cash assistance."

Only two years of living off of other people's productivity? The horror.

"One jimmies the political and economic systems by making it virtually impossible to form a viable third party in a two-party system that is much easier to control by playing both sides of the fence with campaign contributions to hand-picked candidates wooed by well-heeled lobbyists on the corporate payroll."

Why wouldn't the well-heeled lobbyist control the candidates of three parties...or four parties? Paraphrasing from the book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal": Every movement that wishes to control a country needs a minority as a scapegoat which it can use to justify their seizing of liberties. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the wealthy.

The wealthy lobbyists and corporations are not competing against poor people. They are competing against other wealthy lobbyists and corporations. The rich can't control whether or not people choose to have children out of wedlock, drop out of high school, or work less than full time.

Posted by: DITE | July 2, 2008 2:20 AM

""Every movement that wishes to control a country needs a minority as a scapegoat which it can use to justify their seizing of liberties. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the wealthy.""

The scapegoat you describe here is known as the "othering" process. Or I like to call it the "US vs. Them" mentality. Although in America, we have more than one movement, each with its own scapegoat(s). And Political factions are keen to exploit such scapegoats because we all know that hated villain in a compelling story is the best way to motivate people. If you want to get people out to vote, make them feel like someone else in society is out to impose their viewpoint and take away their rights. Both parties do this. If we're really going to move forward in discussion, we need to move past scapegoating, past the us vs. them mentality.

Posted by: V | July 2, 2008 9:47 AM

Every movement that wishes to control a country needs a minority as a scapegoat which it can use to justify their seizing of liberties. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the wealthy.

That doesn't at all follow, because in fact it was the wealthy who bankrolled the modern conservative movement, to the tune of billions of dollars; one person local to me gave at least half a billion. They, through their propaganda organs, declared a "war on the poor," including a tinge of racism, during the 1980s. (You're going to tell me that Reagan's 1976 diatribe agaist "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" represented reality? Let's call it by its name -- planned polarization.)

The rich can't control whether or not people choose to have children out of wedlock, drop out of high school, or work less than full time.

Oh, in practics they can and do, thanks to the kind of jobs the poor often have to settle for. Back in the 1980s I worked in a grocery store and only about 10 percent of the hourly workers were full-time (and I'm told that's normal in service industries, which boomed during Reagan). Less money, BTW, means fractured families, which leads to kids out of wedlock and people using and selling drugs, some of which I've seen up close. (And some of those same "rich" people make a stink about abortion.) Let's not forget that educational opportunities also were cut under Reagan, so fewer people were able to afford college to get better jobs. (Think that was a coincidence?)

Posted by: Rick | July 2, 2008 11:01 AM

Posted by: DITE | July 2, 2008 2:20 AM

I'm embarrassed to say that I have been on the dole before. I was on unemployment for a few months until God made me realize how lazy I had become. There was no carrying papers from office to office. I applied online, answered about six questions a week online, and the money showed up in my checking account. Again, I'm not against safety nets, but my experience with government assistance has been safety nets become safety hammocks.

The wealthy lobbyists and corporations are not competing against poor people. They are competing against other wealthy lobbyists and corporations. The rich can't control whether or not people choose to have children out of wedlock, drop out of high school, or work less than full time

DITE:

I was not speaking of unemployment insurance, but welfare. And yes, it is quite easy for an otherwise productive person to become "lazy" (I prefer the word discouraged for most cases) when out of work. After all, looking for work is quite a chore in an economy based on getting something for nothing (at least, that seems to be the way our free enterprise system has been corrupted). I have had plenty of jobs in which I find myself picking up the slack while someone who is supposed to be working "with" me is sitting in the manager's office complaining that I am not doing my fair share of the work. In most cases, these self-promoters are the loudest critics of those lazy, stupid people on welfare.

What world are you living in? Since when do two wrongs make a right? And the current trend is hiring "temporary" help (often with broken promises of a future opportunity to move onto the regular payroll) or part-time help with no benefits. Are you denying the existence of corporate welfare? Perhaps those lazy, stupid CEO's who get big bonuses for "downsizing" to increase profits should try making an honest living for a change.

Posted by: Hermes | July 2, 2008 11:31 PM

Posted by: DITE | July 3, 2008 2:01 AM

I don't know what the price of the minds and efforts of these CEOs is worth because I have never been an owner of a major company.

DITE:

Neither have you been truly poor (materially, that is) if you cannot understand the cumulative effect of favoring schools in "good" neighborhoods over "bad" neighborhoods, or corporate welfare in maximizing profits for those with a few dollars left to invest after trying to pay the bills with half a day's pay for a day's work.

I have been driving taxi for awhile now, and I am averaging less than minimum wage after paying for my gas. I quite possibly will not make enough to pay taxes, but I must pay double social security because I am self-employed. Many of my passengers are working for minimum wage and must use a taxi to get to work because of a poor public transportation system. Most of them tell me that they usually try to walk to work (some as much as 10 miles) when they aren't too tired and the weather isn't too bad. BTW, I don't qualify for much in the way of EITC because I live alone and can't claim anyone as a dependent.

In 2001, I became disabled (I am much better now, but will never fully recover) due to the loss of use of my left hand and arm. I lived off of my savings while hoping and praying that I would be able to go back to work. After a year and a half, my savings ran out and I was forced to apply for disability. I was advised to apply for welfare since the disability process could "take awhile". The reason it takes awhile is because there is a backlog of cases (1-3 years' worth) and most cases are routinely denied the first time around (mainly to discourage people from applying). My case was no different.

Welfare immediately placed me in their "job club" while I had to wait 45 days for any assistance in paying my bills or putting food on my table. I was expected to find a job I could do when I had no experience or training in working with only one good arm. When I finally convinced them that I could not re-enter the workforce at that time, I was sent to a mental health facility to assess my "problem". After registering my name, address, and healthcare info (I was told to say Medicaid pending), I was allowed to speak with someone who could determine what "services" were required. The conversation lasted all of five minutes before the "intake coordinator" handed me a piece of paper with the names, addresses and phone numbers of agencies and told me to call one to set up an appointment. Two weeks later, I received a bill in the amount of $402 for a consultation fee. My case-worker cheerfully told me to forward the bill to her and she would deal with it.

Walk a mile in my shoes and you just may grow a brain.

Posted by: Hermes | July 3, 2008 9:51 AM

Hermes:

I'm glad you are feeling better and in the workforce. Your experience with government assistance is consistent with my belief that it is not effective in lifting people out of poverty. If you can't make money driving a cab, you should quit and find a new job.

"Walk a mile in my shoes and you just may grow a brain."

I'm sorry that you have had economic hardships, but that doesn't have anything to do with how much money rich people make.

Posted by: DITE | July 3, 2008 10:20 AM

"If you can't make money driving a cab, you should quit and find a new job."

Need I detail ALL of my experiences in education and the world of work? Well, for starters:

When my family moved from Florida to New York, I was placed in the "slow" classes and my parents were informed that they should not be surprised if I flunked the first year (10th grade). When I excelled in those classes, I was placed in all advanced classes the next year. The guidance counselors finally realized by my senior year that my strengths were in Math and Science, and, while I was quite literate in English spelling and grammar, I was not well suited to studying classical literature and modern poetry.

In the summer, I worked in construction during the day and at a hamburger stand at night. The project manager on the construction job was full of praise as long as I was doing the work of two other guys, but saw fit to tear me down when I once was 5 minutes late coming back from lunch. The manager at the hamburger stand wanted to train me for Assistant Manager, but I was due to leave for college in a couple of weeks, so I declined the offer. He hired a new person off the street and asked me to train him in operations. Within a week, the new "manager" decided that he knew all there was to know and began changing standard procedures. The General Manager decided that I suddenly needed closer supervision because things weren't running as smoothly as before. I also had a brief stint in a canning factory that fired me when I got injured by a defective piece of equipment that suddenly broke and came crashing down on my foot. Thankfully, it was a relatively minor injury, but it could have been much more serious.

When I entered college as a Math major, I was placed in honors Chemistry and English while forced to take Math courses that I already had in high school. My roommates from New York were quite amused by the small town virgin that didn't smoke or drink or use drugs. When I became stressed out by academic and social pressures, I turned to the university's "counseling" service for advice on how to deal with it. I was given Rorschach tests and Personality Profiles—not a word of advice—and generally made to feel that they thought there was something wrong with me. My grades tanked and the university expelled me. I was too ashamed to go home, so I became homeless for awhile.

After a couple of months, I got a job in a cardboard manufacturing factory. Before long, my hands resembled raw hamburger from paper cuts. I met my future wife and took her to Florida to meet my family, as they had moved back down and my mother was begging me to come home. We married down there in the Lutheran church, and I worked a couple of jobs until my wife became homesick. So we moved back to Buffalo to be near her family. They were suitably unimpressed with her choice of husbands since they were Irish Catholic, so we had our marriage "rectified" with another ceremony—which was kept private because my wife was 6 months pregnant at the time. The priest was kind enough to inform me that Catholicism is the only "true" Christian religion and pointed out the error of Martin Luther who was alternately referred to as rebellious monk and a wayward priest (he couldn't seem to decide which).

Eventually, I went to work at the local steel plant—first in production, then as an electrician. Most of my co-workers spent much of their time moaning and groaning about how tough they had it and looking for ways to avoid any work that didn't earn them a big bonus on top of their regular pay. I was called a fool for stating that it didn't make sense to go on strike for an extra 25 cents per hour on a three year contract and accused of advocating "giving up the right to strike". I had to do the math for them to prove that in the end they would lose much more than they could ever gain. When the company threatened to close, my union "brothers" ridiculed me for taking it seriously. I was informed that the plant would never close. Well, it did. The Reagan administration gutted the Trade Readjustment Act and left us high and dry while employers refused to hire former steelworkers for at least a year until they could be absolutely sure that the plant would remain closed. Many of my former co-workers lost their homes and families and everything for which they had worked their entire lives. When I mentioned to my a brother-in-law what they were dealing with in a debate about the wisdom of Reaganomics, he saw fit to label me a "whiner"—much as many so-called Conservatives do so readily today with anyone expressing concern for their fellow man.

Since then, I have worked in various industries in various capacities with similar results:

I enrolled in a Computer Science program at a local "business" school and was again given the business when saddled with an instructor who couldn't program his way out of a paper bag. When others in the class turned to me for assistance in writing and debugging their programs, he went out of his way to flunk me. The first job that came my way when I finally graduated was a temporary position auditing parts at a local manufacturer in the process of moving to Mexico to take advantage of Reagan's Maquiladora program. The engineers and maintenance workers that were sent "on loan" to set up the machinery in Mexico, were given generous bonuses and per diems as well as all the overtime that they could handle. While the local newspaper reported the satisfactory progress being made, the Mexican operation was sending 40% of their product to Buffalo for "rework" to remove defects. The product was then shipped back down and put on their books as if it had never left.

From there, I went to work in a major bank as a peripheral operator. While in training, I was used as a scapegoat by a person who was insulted that she had not received a promotion that went to someone else. She had an argument with another worker and decided to "prove" that she was doing much more work than me. A few months later, I suffered a torn cartilage in my knee. My doctor could not prove that I needed an operation, so he sent me for physical therapy. After 10 weeks, the insurance company "doctor" saw me and declared me fit after I successfully completed one deep knee bend. When I returned, I had a new manager and a new crew of poorly trained co-workers. The manager informed me that I needed to be retrained because "things had changed" since I was last there. I asked him to give me an example, and he described a slight change in one procedure. When I informed him that I had suggested that change long before my injury he exploded. Later, he called me to his office and told me that he wanted me to be a leader, but that I had to "lead by example because I wasn't in charge".

Well, someone else was "in charge" and everyone else considered me the new guy on the block who had to accommodate their wishes right down to the choice of break times. I often found myself on my feet for 4-5 hours with no break, and at times was forced to take 2 breaks in a row because someone changed his mind about when he wanted to go. In 2 weeks my knee was swollen to twice its' size and throbbing so badly that I had trouble getting to sleep between my 12 hour shifts. It took me a full year to train them by suggestion, but I got it done before I finally got my operation. When my next review came up, there were references to my having had "trouble" in the past and I got the lowest rating in the department. When half of my department got laid off, I was the first one out the door.

Then there was the night auditor's job at a local fleabag motel that was in financial difficulty. In 4 years time, my workload was doubled while undergoing 2 changes in management which required my learning 3 different methods of operation. I had no vacation, holidays, or pay raise. Of course, I managed to get myself fired again so I could be replaced by a desk clerk at a lower rate of pay. Ironically, it was at my suggestion that I had been allowed to train him as a back-up in case of emergency.

From there I went to work for a medical services company in the process of converting to a new computer system while trying to produce monthly, quarterly, and year-end reports. I was asked to be "flexible" in my hours because they were trying to control overtime costs. Once I was "trained" by a person who informed me on my first night that she had wanted the job, I began introducing efficiencies that allowed me to complete my tasks in 25-30 hours/week. I worked anywhere from 4-12 hours on any particular night, depending on how much work there was to do. On some nights, I came in to be sent home immediately because I wasn't needed. While I was saving them a lot of money, I overheard a couple of managers bemoaning the fact that I had been hired full-time. It didn't matter that I had opted out of their health insurance since I was covered by my wife's policy; nor did it matter that any credit I earned for vacation was based solely on the number of hours I worked and not on the number of weeks I had been there.

Moreover, when I first started, I was told of a 2 year old problem with their newest and fastest printer. It seems that they could not configure it to print management reports. They checked with the printer technician and they checked with their software vendor. Nothing had worked up until that point. When I asked where the printer manual was, no one seemed to know. After 5 months on the job, the person who had "trained" me called and asked me to look in her desk for something she had left behind. Right on top of everything else was the missing manual. While performing my regular duties, I often had to wait for several minutes for the computer to perform some task before I could do anything else. While waiting, I thumbed through the manual and within 2 hours had fixed their 2 year old problem. I was severely criticized for not scheduling a meeting and asking permission to do my job.

In case you haven't guessed it by now, I was again fired just before a big layoff and deprived of unemployment insurance. The manager was quite proud of herself for saving the company a few bucks at my expense.

I went back to the factories for awhile until my disability forced me onto Welfare. While "on the dole", I took some courses in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Access) and eventually got a job with a mental health agency as a secretary for 3 "privatized" county offices. The lion's share of my work was with the Supported Housing Program for mentally ill homeless persons. I developed all the processes and procedures for tracking and documenting cases for 10 housing providers under 24 contracts with 500 beds. Additionally, the "consumers", as they were called (I personally prefer to call them clients), had to be linked with care coordination at one of eight organizations with approximately 100 case managers between them. Getting the proper documentation to complete the application process and put the client on a waiting list was an exercise in futility. Despite regular prodding by me, the case managers were slow to pass along the information I needed. Since we were dealing with mentally ill homeless persons, time was of the essence. However, there were actually cases that took a full year to activate. Many of the cases were dropped because we had lost contact with the client, and some of them actually died while they were waiting for us to get our act together.

None of this fazed my happy-go-lucky manager, who was more concerned with talking about his new house, his new car, and his wonderful social life than resolving a 7 month old problem in introducing a new, more streamlined application that no one seemed to know about. When he cheerfully mentioned that he would have to get around to my second review 6 weeks after I was due for my third review and a lousy 22 cent raise at a time that gas had doubled in price to the unheard of level of $3/gallon, I came to the conclusion that it was a hopeless cause.

Since I had developed all the spreadsheets and the Access Database used for tracking and reporting, no one else knew how it worked. None of the secretaries were interested in bidding on my job when I left, as they had seen how hard I was working compared to them. Besides, they all knew how lazy my manager was. My department went for a full month without a secretary before the job could be advertised to the general public. I hope they got a good one. I told the CEO and HR Manager what skills they should look for in order to replace me. Moreover, I spent my own time at home producing a detailed job description for guidance since the one they had at the time was rather sketchy and out of date.

Now, do you still want to tell me how "lazy and stupid" welfare recipients are?

BTW, I contracted Polio when I was a year old, and it was a full year before I took another step in life. I thank God every day that I can still walk, but I have been dealing with joint and muscle pain all my life and have never had the strength and stamina of my peers. I gradually made progress until my early 40's, when I discovered Post-Polio Syndrome was sapping my strength. Most doctors are unfamiliar with the condition, and there aren't any specialists in the immediate area. Since it is difficult to diagnose without a lot of tests to eliminate other possibilities, they are not inclined to go to the trouble. I am currently being treated with ibuprofen and antidepressants to make me happy that I can't use Marijuana to relieve my pain, because, after all, it is the "most dangerous" drug according to the government. The only real danger to medical marijuana is the threat to the profits of pharmaceutical companies that oppose the importation of drugs from Canada because of "safety" concerns even as they outsource the production of their drugs and compounds to Communist China—those wonderful folks producing your children's toys loaded with lead.

Posted by: Hermes | July 3, 2008 3:43 PM

Hermes -- Your post reminded me that folks need justice, not charity. Thanks.

Posted by: Rick | July 3, 2008 7:36 PM

The political right has spent over 30 years heavily promoting the idea that US poverty really isn't "that bad". It is. They have also promoted the idea that US poverty is merely a consequence of bad personal choices/bad behavior,
or a "lifestyle choice", and that's ludicrous. I don't think the average American has any concept of just how harshly punitive our social policies against the poor have become.

The leading causes of US poverty are illness/disability, personal tragedies, and the sort of economic downturns we see today. Not everyone can work, and there aren't jobs for everyone who can. Our system of aid for the seriously ill/disabled is so complex that many simply can't complete the application process. When they can, the length of time between filing for disability aid and actually receiving it is now up to 5 years. In the past, people could fall back on welfare while waiting for their disability application to be processed. The last I heard, there is now a 3-year lifetime limit on welfare, with plans to cut that back to 1 year.
"No excuses." During this years-long waiting period, many of the ill/disabled must simply try to figure out a way to survive. This tells us much about ourselves, as a people.

We still hear that welfare reform "moves people from welfare to work". That's misleading, at best.It doesn't work that way. There is no entitlement to aid, no matter how desperate your circumstances, and states are provided with financial incentives to keep welfare rolls small.
Only a very few who do receive welfare are able to access education and job skills training.If you can't get the help you need to be able to work, too bad. When you reach the time limit, your case is closed. States chose NOT to track these people to learn what becomes of them; this way, they can simply point to the caseload reduction (some 80%)stats and let the public assume that the poor received the help they needed to be able to work.

I try to tell myself that if people understood what our poverty is really like, if they had any concept of what actually causes and maintains poverty, and certainly if they understood how close they (the average person) is today to becoming impoverished, they would demand that government start working on human needs policies, putting the common good above corporate greed.
But I don't really believe that will happen. After 30 years of media and opportunistic politicians portraying the poor as disgusting deviants while the media exiled them from the public forum, America is unwilling to take a close look at the facts, much less have any more compassion for the poor than they have for a worm.
And I'm convinced that Americans truly love to choose a (powerless) scapegoat against whom they can feel superior.

Posted by: Anonymous | July 12, 2008 9:32 PM