OT: New Orleans (VERY long!)

Pogroms weren't perpetrated by armies, for the most part. As I said before, many more perished than successfully fled.

Elizabeth

And FEMA had the way out blocked.

Elizabeth

The same holds true for people collecting Disability: we WANT to work but no one will hire us.

For those not familiar with the US Disability system, it is based upon a percentage of your prior salary. Even with my good salary, mine (if/when I get it) will be less than minimum wage. Hardly an incentive to frivolously quit work and become a societal leech.

When I first went off work, I thought I could do 8 hours work between

12:01 AM and 11:59 PM, by working an hour, resting an hour or two, throughout the day. Yet, every single place I applied to, as soon as I asked if they would be amenable to me working at home, I found myself talking to a dial tone. No, that's not quite accurate: one (and only one) attorney was curious WHY I needed to work at home and took a few moments to ask questions. He explained why this, that and the other accommodation I required went beyond what the law required employers to offer. After his analysis and some reading, I concluded he was right, I was not employable; the law did NOT require anyone to allow me to work at home, or to take 2 two-hour naps during the work day, or to provide me a specially-designed cubicle where I could do my work horizontal due to dizzy spells when I sat up.

Then I put out some feelers through Work At Home groups, and found several opportunities that would allow me to work at home ... after working in the office for a year so they could see whether I was trustworthy enough to work unsupervised. Obviously, not any help to someone who needs to start working at home NOW.

Americans with Disabilities Act was supposed to help the disabled get back to work. In fact, what it does is help those who already have jobs to get the accommodations to keep jobs. Those of us who've lost our jobs and are trying to get back into the work force are still facing the same problems the disabled always have: if there are two equally-qualified candidates, the healthy one will get the job.

As Ericka says, if you don't have children, there's very little out there in the line of help for you. Since my Unemployment ran out in Sept. 2000, I have not gotten one cent of government benefits. No welfare, no Medicare, no food stamps. Through private programs run by the utility companies, I got a 10-15% discount, i.e., I still have to come up with $100/month myself.

A friend who used to be a social worker before she became disabled has been trying to find me some help, and runs into the same roadblocks I did: I'm not eligible for the programs because I'm not "officially disabled". The longer the judge can put off giving me that official determination, the longer the government can avoid offering me any assistance.

If I'd had any brains, I would have skipped the Disability system, picked up some stranger in a bar, and had a baby to get me into the welfare system, where no doctor or judge has the ability to decide some mythical job exists where they'd be thrilled to accommodate someone of your talents.

The same questions would apply to you too, Elizabeth, don`t forget!

Pat P

I am pretty sure you mean that they would apply to me if I were making any claims, but since so far I haven't, they don't. I'm actually pretty careful not to make claims I can't back up. I can't say the same for you.

Elizabeth

"Dr. Brat" wrote in news:0cadnQ7rCK1rBLzeRVn- snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

For four days, according to my friend who slept on the highway and in his car for all that time, with little food or water.

K

And she had access to *INFORMATION*. That's the critical component.

Having read many studies of the welfare system, both government and independent. Available in a university library near you, should you be interested ;-)

No, that's just a cop out. You can go to the research and read it and evaluate the methodology and the analysis for yourself. Yes, a lot of the stuff publicized by politicians and politically oriented think tanks is heavily manipulated. Nevertheless, there are scads of independent researchers working in this area and publishing in rigorous academic outlets where they are required to be up front about their methodologies.

Yeah. I think it says that they got tired of paying out the money and decided to cut people off pretty much regardless of their situation. And I think when you look at the studies of the effects of "welfare reform" you find that the new rules aren't helping very much because the people wanted to work before and want to work now, by and large, but have other factors that make it difficult or impossible.

On the evidence of spending a significant amount of time studying the large body of literature in the field.

Well, "never" is a pretty long period of time to study. We do know from studies that the population of people receiving assistance is not stable (i.e., people tend to move in and out rather than staying in). And, of course, the 60 month limit is a lifetime limit, so once they've exhausted that, they can't go back on the welfare rolls anyway. Also, your question begs another question--if they couldn't make ends meet before going on welfare, absent intervention to change things, how are they going to make ends meet *after* going on welfare? If you take someone who is healthy and has a high school education and has just experienced a temporary setback in life, it's not all that surprising that with a little cash assistance to get them through a rough spell, they'll be back in the work force again soon. Take someone without a high school education, without a spouse, with a young child or two, or maybe some physical or mental disability and the employment prospects are going to be just as bleak post-welfare as pre-welfare unless there is access to employment, education, and child-care support (which is limited). The average person on welfare is a 30 year old single woman with 1 or 2 children, with nearly half not having a high school diploma or GED. Most people who leave welfare as a result of getting a job are financially

*worse* off than they were while on welfare. The most common reason for recidivism is a newborn. One would *expect* that those who are longer term recipients of welfare are those who have the more significant barriers to work. Models of recidivism rates find that the big contributors to recidivism are lack of education, lack of available jobs, lack of (or sporadic) child support, younger children, more children, lower wage job upon exit, lack of health care benefits upon exit, etc. These aren't related to motivation or an attitude of dependence. These things don't get fixed by just telling someone to get a better attitude. Where recidivism is high, you'll find that barriers to work are high.

My point was that people who thought that didn't know you very well, just as you likely don't know very well the situations of the average welfare recipient. Just like lots of people now think that anyone who is poor is there because of character flaws, there were likely people who thought you had to decide between gas and formula because you probably spent your money on booze or some such thing. It's very easy to think the worst of others when you don't really know them.

You place the blame on individual choices and character flaws. I think it's much more likely to be structural defects. I think there's a lot more empirical support for the latter position, and furthermore, interventions geared at improving structural deficits is a lot more successful at getting people out of poverty than "character intervention."

I haven't made any statement about my political affiliation. My opinion in this matter is based on my understanding of what is known empirically about poverty. I'm very pragmatic. I support what *works*, not whatever some ideologue promotes.

I didn't say anything about who was responsible for what. I simply observed that the cause of the problems in NO is not a sheep-like mentality resulting from years of dependence on federal (or other) handouts. Poverty is a lot more complicated than that.

I don't have any disagreement with that. I just don't think that you have a realistic view of what leads to poverty and how to get out of it. If an attitude adjustment would solve the problem, many fewer folks would be in poverty--not all, but many fewer.

Best wishes, Ericka

Amen to that. I didn't go to college to be a secretary, but as soon as employers heard that I had worked my way through school as a secretary, that was all they were willing to offer me. I'd apply for an entry-level management job and the interview would turn to "the man we hire will need a good secretary". I have numerous college debate ballots saying I have a "commanding presence", so I wasn't being offered the secretarial job because I'm too mousy to be a good manager.

Yep. Let's take the local bus system as an example. They pay a good hourly wage and good benefits, but drivers start out part-time for several *years* before they are eligible for full-time and benefits. Starting drivers also work split shifts, scheduled to make it tough to pick up another part-time job in between. If you're a single mom, you'd better be able to leave your kids with granny, because day care centers aren't open at the times you have to work.

I had a long convo with one of the female drivers about this -- she couldn't afford to quit her full-time minimum wage job to train for this better job until she got a boyfriend who could help support her. Since beginning drivers get the very early and very late routes, she had to buy a car -- the bus didn't run early enough to get her to work on time, and she often drove the last run at night, so couldn't have gotten home after work on the bus. She could see that it would be better once she got to full-time, but it was the intervening several years that were the problem, and a lot of her friends couldn't get by for several years on less than they were earning even if there was a big payoff at the end.

I've also heard from several grocery cashiers that their hours are intentionally kept below the threshold where they'd get benefits, so their actual take-home pay isn't much more than they'd get from a full-time minimum wage job.

Personally, I went out looking for a part-time paralegal job, and discovered that the hourly rate for P/T is *half* what I'd been earning F/T. For working half the hours, I'd take home a quarter of the pay (and none of the benefits). You know me, I question such things, and I was told that being "allowed to" work part-time was a substantial benefit to me, and I should expect to pay for that benefit by accepting lower hourly pay for the exact same work.

Tia Mary wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

The massive flooding *still* isn't over.

is an interactive map giving various water depths as of Tuesday, September 6. Many parts of the city near Lake Pontchartrain were still under 10 feet of water, a week after the storm. You can't walk through ten feet of water.

K

The systems are quite different, and yes, there are significant differences in results.

That's why in order to make responsible judgements, one is familiar with a broad range of research and takes the time to evaluate methodologies rather than just skimming the claimed "results." It ain't rocket science. Anyone with some basic statistics and basic understanding of research can read the studies for themselves and do a pretty decent job of evaluating them. Heck, you can weed out a lot of crappy studies just using common sense. There's no need to dismiss the value of research in general just because there are crappy "studies" out there. It's just a matter of deciding to put in the time to find better quality information.

Best wishes, Ericka

As pointed out by Ericka and confirmed by me, there are no benefits available in the US for single, childless people who do not qualify for Disability.

Thanks to Ronald Reagan, it is very difficult for even disabled people to qualify for Disability, so I rather doubt that the young healthy people born since Reagan have been able to lie their way onto Disability. I've been fighting for my benefits for 5 years.

I've heard several news stories over the years about formerly middle-class white families who, after both parents' jobs were sent overseas, needed to divorce in order to get welfare for the children -- with a father in the home, they didn't qualify for welfare, even if both parents were unemployed for a year. I have heard from a welfare recipient that her benefits were threatened because her Target receipt showed she'd bought a pack of men's underwear; it was for her brother, who reimbursed her, but was used by the welfare dept. as proof that a man was living with her and she was therefore not eligible for benefits.

And just because someone appears "fit" does not mean they are. I've had many a bus stop convo with an attractive man who turns out to be wholly disconnected from reality and therefore cannot hold a job. I look perfectly healthy, too, until I try to do something physical, like walk a few blocks or serious housecleaning.

This reporter should get his facts straight. The Posse Comitatus Act does NOT forbid federal aid, or require the state to give up control to the federal government. In fact, two of the largest aid groups, the Coast Guard and the National Guard, aren't even *covered* by the Posse Comitatus act and could be sent in at the discretion of the president with no problems.

Now, that's not to say I think the local and state governments should get off scott free. I think there were significant failures at the local and state level as well. But the whining that the president's hands were tied just doesn't carry water with me.

Best wishes, Ericka

And I'd bet your friend was a LOT better off than the people in the evac centers!

I could certainly back up claims I make about my own country and area - which pretty much convinces me that things aren`t so different anywhere else, particularly balancing out news reports and articles, If you`re just carefully sitting on the fence, as it appears - be careful you don`t end up with a bum looking like a hot-cross bun! ;-))

Pat P

Terminology snafu here -- there are many areas still floodED but water is not gushing into the areas. IIRC the floodING slowed and stopped on the second day -- water levels had reached equilibrium. I never said people could or should walk through 10 feet of water. The area around the evac centers was not flooded and anyone who wanted to

*could* have walked out regardless of FEMA.....

Tia Mary wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Have you actually spoken to anyone in that situation? Because I have. And I can say without a doubt, that you have not the least bit of a clue about what it was like there. Do you actually think a 6'3" 200+ pound track coach would blythely sit in his car with little or no food or water for four days if he had another choice?

K

I couldn't find a source, either. Further, it doesn't sound like it was written by a journalist.

It's one thing to talk about two sides of a story and fair play, it's quite another if "the other side" isn't true.

Dianne

Brenda Lewis wrote: