I was all set to write a nice, cosy, slightly smug blog about Valentines Day being fake this week. Then, I got sent a link to a news story that destroyed all thoughts of ridiculing romance as effectively as a flamethrower deals with a daisy. My friends really suck at times.
Rage mode on, and some readers may want to stop right now. I'd not blame you. This is not the usual blog post.
The tale itself is the usual police blotter fare. A woman arrested over the death of a child from abuse and neglect. No one really knows, the autopsy has not been carried out yet. A lot of indignation, the usual comments of "string her up" (hey, the story is from Texas) but not a single comment on possibly the worst part of the story.
15 people, 4 adults and 11 children, were squeezed into a one bedroom apartment. In America, in 2012. What? How is that even possible? According to a friend who knows the area, these overcrowded appartments are unaffectionately known as hives. They are growing in number.
CPS flat out knew the family was a risk. While they were poking around, did they somehow fail to notice an extra 10 people in a 20 by 25 foot apartment? Apparently they did miss them.
This little girl was 5 years old. Looked about 3, from the report. Not one of her siblings, not one of the neighbors said a word or did a thing. They can, to be blunt, expect a warm welcome in Hell when they get there. The adults in question, I will be happy to send there myself, right now. But that is not what has my blood up to a boil and willing to ask questions, kick doors and measure nooses for necks here.
Not what you'd call fond of government departments, having dealt with way too many, but I usually make an exception for CPS. Often they do amazingly good work while chronically underfunded and understaffed. This time, no.
What the h*ll are these hacks being paid for! They are paid to protect children. That is their job. Their single reason for collecting their paycheck. If they forget, all they need do is look at the door or the stationary letterhead - Child Protection Services. Not a lot of wiggle room in that description, is there?
They failed. A little girl died. RIP and don't bother sending flowers. She can't smell them.
Yet, though as much as CPS has p*ssed me off, there are worse to blame. The vultures who leech off these people, and the first person to make a crack about illegals is going to get a sharp backhand from me.
I spent some serious time in Mexico. Not on the beaches, in the hill country, in a tiny village. Didn't mean to, but was doing the tourist thing on the motorbike and crashed on a bad road. Took a while to recover, and the nearest doctor was 60 miles away, so I was left to the mercies of the priest and his housekeeper (wife, to be honest, but ignored that. not my place to judge).
About once a month, about dawn, a truck would rattle through and someone would climb on board. Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Promised good living and the high life in Texas or Arizona in exchange for the travel fee and a few favors. The high life is bare subsistance wages for men, prostitution for women. Living in hives and fearing the knock on the door.
Those are the ones I want to kill. The ones who effectively have slaves. Who pack people into a place like rats in a box.
Sorry that this was a bit longer and more disjointed than usual. Rage and tears rarely go together. And my friend? She took the truck north the second month I was in the village. She came back the fifth month, walking. We still write, often.
Que Dios te bendiga, Artemisa.
Anti-Valentines will be next week.
Rage mode on, and some readers may want to stop right now. I'd not blame you. This is not the usual blog post.
The tale itself is the usual police blotter fare. A woman arrested over the death of a child from abuse and neglect. No one really knows, the autopsy has not been carried out yet. A lot of indignation, the usual comments of "string her up" (hey, the story is from Texas) but not a single comment on possibly the worst part of the story.
15 people, 4 adults and 11 children, were squeezed into a one bedroom apartment. In America, in 2012. What? How is that even possible? According to a friend who knows the area, these overcrowded appartments are unaffectionately known as hives. They are growing in number.
CPS flat out knew the family was a risk. While they were poking around, did they somehow fail to notice an extra 10 people in a 20 by 25 foot apartment? Apparently they did miss them.
This little girl was 5 years old. Looked about 3, from the report. Not one of her siblings, not one of the neighbors said a word or did a thing. They can, to be blunt, expect a warm welcome in Hell when they get there. The adults in question, I will be happy to send there myself, right now. But that is not what has my blood up to a boil and willing to ask questions, kick doors and measure nooses for necks here.
Not what you'd call fond of government departments, having dealt with way too many, but I usually make an exception for CPS. Often they do amazingly good work while chronically underfunded and understaffed. This time, no.
What the h*ll are these hacks being paid for! They are paid to protect children. That is their job. Their single reason for collecting their paycheck. If they forget, all they need do is look at the door or the stationary letterhead - Child Protection Services. Not a lot of wiggle room in that description, is there?
They failed. A little girl died. RIP and don't bother sending flowers. She can't smell them.
Yet, though as much as CPS has p*ssed me off, there are worse to blame. The vultures who leech off these people, and the first person to make a crack about illegals is going to get a sharp backhand from me.
I spent some serious time in Mexico. Not on the beaches, in the hill country, in a tiny village. Didn't mean to, but was doing the tourist thing on the motorbike and crashed on a bad road. Took a while to recover, and the nearest doctor was 60 miles away, so I was left to the mercies of the priest and his housekeeper (wife, to be honest, but ignored that. not my place to judge).
About once a month, about dawn, a truck would rattle through and someone would climb on board. Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Promised good living and the high life in Texas or Arizona in exchange for the travel fee and a few favors. The high life is bare subsistance wages for men, prostitution for women. Living in hives and fearing the knock on the door.
Those are the ones I want to kill. The ones who effectively have slaves. Who pack people into a place like rats in a box.
Sorry that this was a bit longer and more disjointed than usual. Rage and tears rarely go together. And my friend? She took the truck north the second month I was in the village. She came back the fifth month, walking. We still write, often.
Que Dios te bendiga, Artemisa.
Anti-Valentines will be next week.
The one good thing that can be said of this is that the little girl no longer has to live like that. I would say "and maybe more attention can be paid to situations like this," but somehow I just doubt that's going to happen.
CPS does a lot of good things sometimes. Other times, many times, CPS turns the other cheek. I've seen it happen more than once in my own neighborhood and it's happened once in my own life. Child is in danger. CPS says "We'll give you a few days to sort this out" in a habitation issue or maybe "there's not enough evidence to support the claims" in the cases of child abuse.
Working in a place like that, you probably see horror story after horror story. I bet it burns some people out. I bet it desensitizes them. But this needs to stop. Fresh blood and sound minds need to be put into CPS, and if that means blood and minds are taken out, then so be it.
These children can't wait for help. ESPECIALLY not when they live as this little girl did.
I have to disagree with you, MM. I think tears and rage go together well. Tears to grieve, rage to cause change.
I don't know where to begin... There's just so much in this world that needs to be done.
As your friend told you MM, it is possible for a bunch of people to be squeezed into one room. I used to live in these nasty cockroach filled apartments with my family and there would be 12 or more of us and we were too poor to afford a bigger and better place to live. I just hope that the rest of you don't go assuming that all big families who are too poor to afford a bigger living space are abusive and neglectful. It's sick and sad what happened to the little girl.
It is appalling that this could happen in 2012 in the wealthiest country in the world. We have a surplus of food. Yet somehow there are a lot of people going hungry. I actually don't get the string them up desire with this woman even though what happened was horrible. She is a victim too. Now before anyone accuses me of being a "typical liberal," I will say that when it comes to people abusing children, I'm usually the first to holler "string their ass up!" I am politically a liberal but that has nothing to do with it. That is my knee jerk reaction to those who harm children or animals.
I never thought that in 2012 I would be living in an upside down mortgage in a mobile home with no working plumbing except for the sink and no appliances. I work full time. I make well above minimum wage although I don't make a fortune by any means. Before taxes and insurance come out of my pay, I make about $2500 a month. Again, not a fortune, but I could probably make ends meet on it. However, after taxes and interest come out? I make $1500 a month. Between mortgage and lot rent, I pay $1100 a month. Now with the rest I have to pay bills and buy groceries. What a joke.
I am glad I have no young children and I am glad that my 21 year old son is not fool enough to think that getting into a relationship (or worse yet, screwing around willy nilly with any piece of tail he can get his hands on) is a good plan. He is finishing his pharmacy technician certification training this spring and from there will try to get a job (in this economy it may be a bit tough but he wants one) and begin his pre-med training.
My son does not live here in the hell hole where my "toilet" is a trash bucket lined with a bag and a puppy pee pad because there's no way I can afford to get the plumbing fixed. His father's family helps him pay for a modest apartment in a location that is relatively safe but he does have unwanted six-legged roommates. I help him buy food, and then I come over and we have dinner together. My food? Right now it's a box of Kashi Go Lean Crisp and some Kirkland Trail Mix. I don't have a working refrigerator and I can't afford to get it replaced.
And for those who take the privileged attitude of ripping on larger people? Go fuck yourselves. I weigh close to 300 pounds and although it really does not affect me as far as being able to move around or do anything that people of normal ability of a smaller size can do, and nor does it affect my health, there is the stigma that surely I must be cramming my pie hole with buckets of Kentucky Fried every day.
There is a strong correlation between poverty and obesity. And most heavy people do not eat significantly more than their more slender counterparts. I do have endocrine conditions that I would like to get resolved--there is something whacky with my pituitary that causes secondary hypothyroidism and the fact that I'm going through menopause doesn't help. But do I have the money to get this figured out? If you guessed no, give yourself a gold star.
There are also certain medications (a lot of medications, in fact) that can promote weight gain. I'm on one of them: lithium. But I make the choice to be on it because I would not go back to the way I was before it. I was finally correctly diagnosed with type II bipolar disorder when I was 38 and after a week on Lithium the irritability and paranoia had settled down considerably. It also helps control the borderline personality issues that I live with. I would rather be fat and reasonably well balanced than thinner and so volatile that no-one could stand to be around me.
My point in telling all this? Ten years ago I did not make the salary that I make now, and yet I was able to eat a good stable diet--and I weighed 120 pounds less even though I was eating more. I was also eating more nutritious food. Correlation, I would say. I also had a working shower, working appliances, and even a washer and dryer. I was living comparatively high on the hog, and I was working as a waitress and bartender making significantly less than I do as a health care technician making $17 an hour.
There is something badly, badly, badly wrong with our system today and it is not so simple as "vote Democrat" or "vote Republican" to fix it. Things are not working. We need health care that's available to everyone regardless of income. We need to make food available to everybody regardless of income. And when families with children need help, we need to make sure they can get that help without being afraid to ask for it because they are afraid that their children will be taken away.
I can live on fucking Kashi Go Lean and trail mix for a long time and continue doing my business on a puppy pad if I know that nothing like what happened with this unfortunate woman and her poor child will happen again.
And if I know that my son will have a shot at a good future.
What the HELL can we do, we ask? There are millions if people in the US whose views match those expressed in the opinions written above. You can call it anarchy or whatever the hell you want to, but we need to so SOMETHING! Where are all our taxes going to, peope? The republicans want ya' to think it's all going to @ entitlements" , the Demicrats say " give us more $$$ and we'll fix the poverty problem." The sad truth us that not a damn one I'd them gives a shircabour a damn one of us, regardless of our political views , race, income , etc... What it's all about , you see us who can fill their pockets the fullest the fastest before they get caught pants down. Bitter? Jaded? Cynical? Fuckin A, I am, and you all are to. My question to you is, what the fuck are we going to do about all this? My God , can't we do something people? Do we really believe that all we are here in this life is to lead robotic , fake, shallow lives where in which we allow children to be sexually abused and not a damn thing is done about it. The previous writer had it right, heads needs to roll , laws need to change so they include some common sense. We need to stop worrying about protecting child molesters privacy and go after these pieces of shit. If your senator or representative is not in favor of passing stiffer laws, you might want to check out what's on his computer. People: pick a cause you care about ( obviously mine is child exploitation) and go after it like all hell's broke loose. If enough of us organize , we can do something. Check our www. protect. org. Checkvoyt whatctjus organization is trying to do to stop the evil that no child should ever have to face. Child sexual abuse/ child neglect is rampant in the US. Unlike breast cancer, it doesn't get a pretty pink ribbon or a celebrity spokesperson fighting for awareness, or an overgrown, overblown entity such as Susie B ( oh yes I did!) funneling millions of $$$ into it. Yeah,?breast cancer is beyond terrible ( my own Mother had it). Does it need every $$ and all the attention that comes down the pike? Sheesh!! I'll tell you what's worser than breast cancer, my 6 year old grandson's nightmares about his molester, and the fact that no one did a damn thing about it. It's happening to some child right now, and we are letting it happen .
I was at work the other day when a guy and some of his friends walk up to me. The guy had pulled up to the store in a new Corvette. He dressed in good clothes; high-end pants around his knee and all. He plops a Mountain Dew, some Skittles, and a bag of Cheetos on the table and says to me, "Y'all take food stamps?"
We didn't. "No, sir, we don't."
"What the fuck? Y'all don't take food stamps?" He looks at his girlfriend, "Mothafuckas don't take food stamps. What the fuck is this shit. Man."
He then proceeds to reach into his pocket, pull out a huge wad of bills, and try to sort through the hundreds and fifties to find a five dollar bill.
This happens all the time. And sometimes when people do this, they ask if they can cash their "government checks" here, and flip their shit at me when I say no.
Then they're like "Where do I go to cash it!" and I can only say "I don't know, I only cash a paycheck, I don't know anything about government checks," and drive in my piece of shit car to my piece of shit house that I'm almost losing, to eat piece of shit food and try to pay the bills on the piece of shit utilities that have to debate with themselves whether they want to turn on that day.
We DO need to change things, but a lot of people won't want to because they are benefiting from the way things are right now.
Not surprising, charity - and that's what welfare really is - has never been a long term solution to poverty. Seriously, take a look at Africa; 40 years of well-intentioned Western aid (charity) did nothing to reduce poverty, but it only took four years of investments from China to create a new a rapidly growing middle class.