How Faculty Treat Staff at Universities

The following exchange happened at some point in near history at "Midwestern University." It demonstrates well how staff are (mis)treated by faculty:

*Note: Names have been changed to protect privacy and this vignette loosely depicts a real incident but no assumptions should be made about when it happened, who was involved, and remember it is a story.

A Day in the Life of University Staff

One day, a nearly sobbing gray-haired African American student I knew well ran into my office.

"She failed me. She failed me. I knew she hated me."

I asked her to explain. She told me about a miserable online class she took. She still learned a lot, but she was convinced the professor was wicked.

"Why?" I asked.

"I have all of these emails sent between us students where we are talking about all of the issues that came up in class. She did not explain things well. She makes you pay to hear what you did wrong on assignments, and you know I don't have pennies to spare," my gracefully aging, immaculately groomed student stated. I knew, because our program had to find grant money in our own budget to get her over the finish line.

"Pay her?" I queried.

"You have to send her a stamped envelope. I don't know how many stamps to put on it, because she has the papers and I can't weigh them."

"Well, did you write to your instructor to find out what happened?"

"Yes, we have written back and forth. But we still don't communicate. She doesn't answer my questions. Plus, I did send her self-addressed, stamped envelopes a while ago, and my graded assignments still have not come. So, I never did know what I was doing wrong that got me Ds on my papers. I am going to graduate school NEXT week. This class is just a general education requirement, can they really do this to me? I am out of financial aid for undergraduate classes. If I have to take it over and I don't graduate, I will never finish college. I'm never going to be a psychologist."

I reassured her that maybe this was just a computer error. She responded quickly, "She hates me, she's been giving me Ds."

I listened to her for nearly two hours as she had a panic attack and thought her graduate school career was over. She was so distrustful of her professor and so convinced the professor was out to get her that I could not even get her to see that the situation might be correctable. That level of alienation from her professor I would attribute to the fact she never met her in person, it was an entirely online class.

I tried to get Ms. Betty* to see that other explanations were possible, but she was sure the professor was malignant. Something clearly went wrong in their interactions in that online class. Now, Ms. Betty being near retirement age, her interactions with computers sans any human contact left her to become paranoid when her grades come back lower than she expected. She prides herself on how well she reads people, and she could not get a sense of her unseen professor.

She has a relatively high GPA and she is confident in her work, so the first time she got a D on an assignment in this class, she became suspicious of the teacher's motives. The lack of proper communication, as defined by Ms. Betty anyway, had intensified her reaction to the next few grades coming in lower than she expected. She was convinced the failing grade was real.

As she paced around, she wanted to call the President of the University or at least the Dean. In her high distress, I called in my boss, the director, and asked him to console her. She repeated everything she had said to me to him. He asked her to try to write to her professor again. I asked her again to write the professor one more time. She finally agreed, but first, she wanted to know all of the steps she had to take to appeal the grade. I printed out the directions provided on the university's website.

Ms. Betty immediately panicked that she needed to write a letter to the chair of her professor's department and she did not know who the person was. We looked around the university's website, and one link that did not work anymore said it was going to give a list of department chairs, deans, and other administrators. Nothing else seemed to answer the question except the now defunct link.

"I need to understand what I need to do and who I need to talk to at every level to get this thing resolved. We only have a day or two before this affects my graduate school career. Can't you do anything?," pleaded Ms. Betty.

"Listen, Ms. Betty, we will find out everything you need to do, so your financial aid for graduate school is not canceled. We will do everything we can to help you get your degree. We can write the Dean and ask if she knows who the department chair is. Then, we write your professor one more time together. I will type and you can dictate what you want to say."

Ms. Betty reluctantly agreed.

The email that I helped my student to craft--after my boss and I convinced her to try again with her teacher is below:

Email#1___Ms. Betty Drafts an Email to Her Teacher__(sent 10 min after Email#2)___

This email was written, but it was not sent until after Ms. Betty had a clear picture of all of the steps she would need to take to successfully appeal her grade.

Dear Professor,

I just received my grade of NC (no credit) for your class,
and I am writing to ask if you received all of my assignments or if perhaps something was missing.

If nothing is missing, could you please provide a detailed accounting of how my grade was determined, including specific grades for each assignment, how the assignments were weighted, and how the final grade was calculated. Could you please send my graded assignments to me as well?

I am hoping to communicate closely with you about options that might be available, because I am keenly interested in working to resolve any problems-- including by redoing any assignments. I was scheduled to graduate this August, and I am beginning my Master's at Midwestern State* this Fall.

I look forward to hearing from you, and you may call me at or email me

Thank you sincerely,
Ms. Betty





Email #2____My Question to the Dean______________________


Dear Dean,

One of our graduating student advisees just received a failing grade in a course in your division, and she would like to appeal the grade. She has contacted the professor without receiving any response. She knows that the next step is to talk to the Department Chair, but we were not clear on who that person would be. Should she be going to you or is there someone else that is more appropriate?

Sincerely,
Me (DMF)



Email #3___Dean's Quick, Thoughtful Answer_______________

Hi DMF,

Thanks for emailing. The Chair of the Department is [Egotistical Professor]*. I'm copying him so that he knows a student will be contacting him soon.

The Dean





Email #4___Chair of Dept, Professor Egotistical, Writes to Everyone____

Dear Dean,

As it happens, the instructor for this course has already informed me of this somewhat puzzling situation. If this is the situation I have in mind, the instructor entered a grade for the student, and the student then contacted the instructor to inform her that the student had had a grade of NC posted. We are checking to see what explains this discrepancy; perhaps there is some kind of technical problem that can be overcome easily.

I should note that it is untrue that the student "contacted the professor without receiving any response." DMF wrote this in an email at 3:45 PM. The instructor has forwarded to me her recent email exchange with the student. The student informed the instructor of this NC in an email message at 5:39 PM. The instructor responded to the student in an email at 9:01 PM--less than three-and-a-half hours after the student's email and well after regular working hours. It is additionally puzzling that DMF wrote that the student had contacted the instructor without receiving a response almost two hours before the student sent her message to the instructor! Students are not helped in any way when they or their advocates make questionable or untrue statements.

I trust this situation will be clarified shortly.

Respectfully yours,

Egotistical Professor




Email #5___My response trying to defend myself______________

Dear Dean and others

I can only go by what a student tells me. the student has two emails she sent to the professor in early August asking questions that were not answered. That is obvious, because she has both her emails with questions and the responses, which fail to address the questions the student asked.

I trust that assumptions will not be made without first communicating with me in the future.

Sincerely,
Me




Email #6_Chair of Dept, Professor Egotistical Writes Me_______

Dear Dr. DMF,

I believe you initiated the accusations, specifically relaying an unverified and (it turned out) untrue charge of unresponsiveness against a faculty member with a very good track record. Your statements in your second email, to the dean of CAS, are irrelevant and unsubstantiated. The student specifically charged that the instructor had not responded to her complaint about the NC, which only appeared yesterday. So communications from earlier in the semester are immaterial. Since you nonetheless saw fit, in your second email, to relay further (again, irrelevant) charges against one of my faculty members, claiming you had evidence to back them up, you might have produced that evidence. I am unsure that said evidence would support your claims.

Quite frankly: students, for any number of reasons, may go off half-cocked and make claims about instructors' behavior that are exaggerated or simply untrue. In almost all such cases, a grievance over grades is involved. This may be annoying, but it is to be expected from a small percentage of students at any institution. University employees, however, should know better than to echo any and all student complaints without checking. Saying that you only know what students tell you isn't good enough when you are relaying and amplifying serious accusations against university faculty or anyone else.


Kind regards,
Egotistical Professor




Email#7___My response to his snarky email______________

I am planning to file a formal complaint against you. First of all, I asked a simple question of the DEAN, not you, about who gets an academic appeal in your department when it is not successful with an instructor.

Second, I wrote the email *with the student in question* and she told me *as we were sitting* there typing to the dean that she had contacted the instructor to no avail. She had two emails printed out that demonstrated that her questions to the professor were not being answered. I will have the student forward them to you immediately. I simply provided the Dean context for the question about who to go to next. This student is a 60 yr old woman about to start graduate school here at our school.

It is NOT my job to sort out who said what, that is *your* job. I am simply supposed to tell my students *who* is next to contact in a grade appeal. I will have to share with this student that she was going off half-cocked when she said this professor was not a good professor for her at all. The fact that she is starting grad school in a few days here will allow her to testify in my complaint.

Finally, I am not engaging in a conversation with someone who is treating me so obnoxiously. What is your nerve trying to blame me for a student/faculty dispute?

Given that the question to the dean was simple and did not involve all of the drama you inserted, you can refrain from contacting me further!

Signed, Me





Email#8__Response from Egotistical Professor_________________

Dear DMF,

I'm sorry you took offense, and that you feel I have been obnoxious. In my last email to you I wrote frankly. I can refrain from writing to you further if that is your wish. However, this entire series of exchanges was initiated when you wrote to my dean, stating as fact a claim of faculty unresponsiveness which, on inspection, proved to be untrue. As department chair it is my duty to point this out. If a student comes to me and tells me she has contacted an instructor and received no response, I usually ask when the student sought to initiate contact and how long she has waited for a response, rather than broadcasting such claims without asking such basic questions. If the student seems to have a well-founded grievance, I will communicate with the instructor promptly asking the instructor to be responsive. On the other hand, if a student's complaint proves invalid or unsupported, I will gently suggest to the student that this is my impression. If others at the university choose to pass on, without even cursory investigation, unfounded claims about my department's faculty members, I am sure you would not expect me to do other than point out the documented facts and defend these faculty members.

Once again, I am sorry if my frankness has hurt your feelings. Each of us has a job to do here, and each of us must do that job.


Kind regards,
Egotistical Professor





Email #9____My response to Egotistical Professor________________

Yes, I did ask you to stop harassing me.

I do thank you though, because you have helped me to decide to take another job at where I will be treated with respect.

Also, your automatic bias against the student and in favor of the professor is interesting. This student's concern that there was NO evaluation for the class that she could fill out should be addressed. Should we warn students not to take faculty problems to the chair of your department since you automatically disbelieve them?

Now, you can do your job, and some other patsy can do mine.

Thanks,
DMF




Last Email to our Big Boss Who has Copies of all of the Above__________

Dear Big Boss,

The condescending tone and utter dismissiveness was palpable. I am a program alumni having grown up in lifelong poverty. I was working for the program to give something back, but I am not willing to sacrifice my dignity to do so. Previous similar treatment by faculty led me to do interviews for other positions. This incident is helping me decide whether to leave here.

I am concerned at the pattern I have observed wherein faculty are extremely disrespectful to staff in our program.

As it is, I served this college for seven months by working as Director and Counselor, both for a salary less than a typical director receives. A program of our exact same size at nearby colleges has five staff. You can imagine what my life has been like doing it all with 1 1/2 staff. And our students are much needier! I am exhausted and mistreated and feel the university has not been exceptionally supportive at this point. I am seriously considering leaving the university for another position.

RESPONSE: Silence


End of the story: The matter was almost resolved at that point; it turned out it was a grading error. The professor would resubmit the grade, and Ms. Betty would pass and go to graduate school.

The Cruel Things Conservatives Say to Poor People

Whenever I tell my life story on a social networking website, a story about a conservative, two-parent married family dropping into poverty and getting trapped there due to my parents having serious mental disabilities, I get attacked. My friend, dulios, theorizes that this is because my life story directly contradicts the right-wing poverty ideology. My parents married, went to church, had all children in wedlock, worked, and yet everything fell apart in ways that the 1981 Des Moines Register article could only skim. On a previous blog, I have put my comments together so people can see what I was saying when the comments below were written. Spelling errors are left in:


1) Besides the sick, filthy, intolerant, materialist hate that you constantly propagate, you really seem to have a Stalinist attitude toward the opinions of the Right. How does one acquire such hate? You are a case study on the mental effects of the materialist mindset on an individual. Just transpose that to authoritarian rule, abracadabra....you have Hitler, Marx, Stalin, Mao. Not really a happy person, are you, Learning the Hard Blogger? (Blogger's Note: What I did to deserve this tirade was suggest we need to take better care of poor children)

2)tell em to go to work and stop drinking, lazy assholes.

3)you gotta take some responsibility for your life, and not lie on the streets and beg for money because you're drunk all the time and can't work. Most of them had the same chances as I did, as people are equal. If they preferred drinking / drugging instead of learning and hard working (they could always have some fun at the weekend :/) than I have no pity for them. Everyone has to take care of himself. (Blogger's Note: I've learned the hard way over time that Pro Life = Everyone Has to Take Care of Himself). So it seems that conservatives can to see babies be born to watch them take care of themselves from birth to death no matter how ugly things get).

4)Learning the Hard Way Blogger, You are certainly free to buy healthcare for as many children as you wish. Are you overburdened? Have you already bought all the health insurance for the needy that you can afford? Perhaps you could start an organization and raise funds for this purpose. However, I doubt you give to charity as Materialists seldom, if ever, do.

It would be a great thing if free citizens actually felt the duty to work together to help those in need by giving and changing hearts, rather than stealing form those that earned their income and have a right do with it what they please. (Blogger's Note: This person is trying to say that being require to give a portion of one's money to the common treasure to fund government efforts at reducing poverty, disease, illiteracy is stealing. Thus, he also suggests that foster children, disabled people, the ill, etc. are thieves.)

I think you are too intolerant and hateful to find it in your heart to give away 10-20% of your income, that is why you subsidize yur selfishness with your fake bleeding heart. By the way, are you tapped out too? I have some charities I can refer you to volunteer for, if you cannot financially support them. Please let me know. I know you really, really care about people. (Blogger's Note: If my full-time employment were not in itself a form of charity--I am discounting my expertise and time by some $30,000 to work for this helping poor people get college degrees, I am proud to also note that our charitable donations include between 12-20 organizations per year. I do two charity walks, and Meals on Wheels in addition to numerous other small volunteer activities).

5) considering those in poverty in the US are really NOT in poverty and, in fact, have it quite good, I think attention would best be focused toward those in nations where they do not have the good fortune of directing their own outcome. (Blogger's Note: Coming soon a posting of what poverty was really like for at least American family.)



6) Again, Learning the Hard Way, you reveal profund stupidity to suggest I think throwing money at the issue is the answer. It is the direct opposite of my view. TO HELP PEOPLE YOU MUST FIRST UNDERSTAND THE CONDITION OF MAN. Clearly, you do not.

7) This "poverty threshold" was recently adjusted, proving the "idea" of poverty to be a political game more than an objective standard. (Blogger's Note: I will be posting scads of evidence about just why there is not such thing as an objective standard. However, there are standards that have been established

Welfare programs are government prisons. I know this for a fact. It is part of my job to know these statistics and about this issue. So, to listen to ignorant neophytes regurgitate profound ignorance over and over is quite frustrating as it reveals the intent of an empty heart that chooses to continue the never-ending cycle for political purposes rather than doing good for fellow citezens.

8) Why do you use credit cards? Geez. Just bizarre. It is quite simple. If you do not like paying interest, then DO NOT ( let me repeat...DO NOT) use credit cards. Good grief, what lunacy! I'll bet you spend 50 bucks a week on lottery tickets too. ugh. (Blogger's note: I never buy lottery tickets, and the credit cards I did use in my life were to buy food and basic supplies for my brother and sister when I got custody of them in my early 20s, and was a graduate student. The debt is mostly paid down, but it sucks to be so poor you have to pay interest for years on food. Nice to be scorned this way though.)

9)Learning the Hard Way Blogger is a ruthless cad that would seem to want to send all conservatives to gas-chambers if she had her way. She has made abundantly clear her hatred for this country as well.

10)You and Learning the Hard Way Blogger are wallowing in your own hatred and creating division. You love your slum communities. They give you purpose. I despise them and want people to leave them and make something of themselves. That happens one individual at a time, by individuals and groups helping individuals. You and your government have a need for the impoverished to remain so. That is power and it is a gramsci tactic of fascist mobilization and division. Learning the Hard Way Blogger's hatred is the worst case scenario for this division. It is militant hatred and I have no respect for it. (Blogger's Note: This guy is patently insane, but like any street corner preacher a few people waste their time and stop to look)

11) Poor people vote Democrat because Democrats allow them to keep being leeches on society by giving them handouts paid for by honest wage earners. Why work when you can sit around on your ass all day and use the government's power of force to STEAL money from other high-achieving taxpayers? And don't give me this ***** about we kicked them off their land either. I feel bad for their ancestors, but that has ***** all to do with the Native Americans of today."

12)Most Americans can't deal with such frugality but that's their problem. Poor people don't have the right to wear nice clothing and eat out. They should be grateful enough that there's salvation army around the corner where they can pick up perfectly usable clothing. It isn't a rich person's problem or fault that the poor continue to make poor financial decisions. A more wealthier person should not have their wealth "stolen" from them at a higher rate to account for these poor financial decisions. The poor should be expect to live frugally and work to get themselves out of their situation.

13)not all rich people are trust fund babies who take their wealth for granted, just like not all poor people are thieves who will rob you blind when you turn your back. (Blogger's Note: Not all rich people are dishonest and greedy either).

14)But I still have to love how many welfare recipients I have seen with shoes expensive enough to provide everybody in my family with a new pair. Oh yeah those spinner hub-caps look real bitchin while they're driving to the local WIC office to pick up their food checks.

I just love working my fingers to the bone so my tax dollars can help them out!!! Wake up you young idiots...Some day you will have a family and you will work your ass off and you will wonder why you do without while others get a free ride...And then you will move from the left to the center of political issues.

15)Poverty is a symptom of a greater disease: Laziness. Sure, there's some circumstance involved, but someone born poor will remain poor unless he decides to do something about it.

16)***** the poor. It's their own fault.

17)The reality is that the hard working and smart are propping up the lazy and useless. It's time this stopped. (Blogger's Note: Yeah, woo, rah. Cheer the endorsement of letting these people just die, damn useless people with disabilities.)

18)It's like raising the minimum wage. It's ***** low for a reason, you're supposed to IMPROVE your own lot in life -- not wait for some lard ass in Washington to vote you a raise. (Blogger's note: see my entry on my dad, the Vietnam war enlistee, who developed schizophrenia and lived a life on minimum wage jobs. He deserves lifelong lowpay according to this lovely commenter).

19)The Dems are basically taxing people who worked hard for their wealth, so that poor people who contribute nothing to society can buy more clothes and sideckickv3's. Im not even lying...(Blogger's note: see multiple previous blog entries with regards to our daily lives in poverty)

20)Survival of the Fittest, I say. (Blogger's note: Cool, so if a zygote can't convince its mother to to keep it, it was unfit.)

All my Clipmarks Comments

"Ahh, rule #1, I'd say is Be born rich. Almost infallible. Then, you can be a complete fu%$k-up like Bush and still be president. For example, I followed every rule mentioned here, and our net worth is still negative. More debts than assets. My mistake, being born poor. I forgot about Rule #2, don't become disabled. You are screwed with long term poverty then.

No one actually believes that you are blind to all the different groups of people who end up in poverty. You choose this denial to feel better about yourselves. You claim to be Christians and yet forget your holy text is littered with references to poverty--trust me I have all the passages marked.

The subgroup of poverty I was born into was working class conservatives who developed serious mental illnesses and fell into poverty. How many are you currently employing a person with schizophrenia at a modest wage of, say $40,000 a year? My dad worked his whole life in minimum wage jobs, and guess what, he lived in poverty. He lived without health insurance until the years of lack of health care and neglect of his inherent vulnerability led to catastrophic health conditions and then VA took over, when it was extra expensive.

FYI, I was born first child to two married parents, one a enlisted Vietnam era vet and the other a college grad. They worked, went to church, and raised conservative little children. They were conservative minded and hyper-religious and everything you want to force all people to be. Also, neither has any criminal record or substance abuse problem.

Is no one on that side aware of downward mobility? My mother is descendant from wealthy Repulican Minnesotans, but any wealth disappeared with the generations as each one had untreated bipolar disorder, progressively losing income and wealth until nothing remained but poverty. Yes, my proud Limbaugh loving grandma died having used all of his remaining inheritance to be a sometime successful entrepreneur and then getting way more Social Security dollars than he ever paid in... needing the state to the very end. And his Limbaugh loving sons were right there letting them pay. Hmm, no principle of detachment from the state there. I've never actually heard of a conservative turning down their social insurance money.

Yup, [wonderful clipper], I think conservatives live in Lake Wobegon where everyone is above average. Some people will have to be the slowest 50% and the least paid 50%--I'm guessing half
Unless you stop letting the market decide and use *gasp* social programs. People that have numerous advantages are often blind to them. I guess admitting that you have a leg up diminishes your accomplishments, in some people's minds.

Anyway, my debt was incurred taking custody of my two youngest siblings, a brother and sister, and raising them without financial support from anywhere when I was 24. I actually have family values. I sacrificed my youth and my freedom from debt for them. I am the definition of responsible. For myself, for my family, and for a wonderful and growing group of former students who write things like this:

"Hi Deborah!
I am SO grateful to simply be able to tell you thank you. So many times over the years you've come into my mind and I sent little winged wishes through the cosmos that you would know my gratitude for your support. And now I can even say more than thank you!"

She was an abused low income suicidal teen I worked with 12 years ago, and I'm proud to have been a leader in the program that led her to her PhD. Thanks to the Internet, I am part of the first generation of service providers to get so much direct feedback even years later. My collection of kudos is the reward, poverty is the cost.

This is how I get paid too little. So long-term poverty can also come from serving humanity as well. But I grew up with Christians, so I was exposed to the idea of sacrifice for others.

"What the hell? Who are you lying to? Do you think the venom spewed at poor people only hits those old enough and strong enough to tolerate it? Did you somehow imagine that poor children and youth or poor disabled people, live in a bubble and don't know that they are treated like dirt and scorned, because of being born poor? I have a lifetime of diaries filled with bullying experiences linked to being poor.

An example. What should we call wealthy suburban St. Louis citizens cheering the following line at inner city St. Louis citizens at a high school basketball game, "Your parents work for our parents, and you'll work for us"? That's probably hilarious in right wing world."

"After growing up *as a poor child* living in neglected squalor--in the land of plenty-- I have often felt intense anger at conservatives' alleged concern for life or children. Don't help, fine, I don't give a shit. But don't you dare lie and pretend to care about the same groups you just voted to kill off slowly. Money is more important than humans to them. Accept it and move on. Perhaps it is a genetic mean-spiritedness. Lots of the stronger personality traits have a lot of evidence for heritability."

"I agree that we all need to tackle problems together. I think that a multi-institution solution is a highly American way to go. I am still so deeply appreciate to the churches that fed us dinner during "soup suppers" when we were kids. We would not have had anything to eat without them. I think some businesses have addressed poverty well through programs such as the Gates Foundation. I am all about teamwork.

The government was essential, because no one else could afford to keep us alive. Conservatives, since I know that I would be dead, if not for welfare, did you ever really value my life when you tried to cut off my means of survival? How does your anti-poor people stance jive with valuing life? Oh, what gives with cutting off poor children? Since everyone keeps missing the point that I was a CHILD and most of the "people" on welfare are children, I must ask, "Why do you hate children?"

It would be easier than you can imagine to turn my back on other poor people or blur my thinking to focus only on those with negative behaviors. I do think a greater proportion of negative social behaviors are done by poor and homeless, often it is their very unlike-ability that makes people turn their back. I'm no Pollyanna. Having spent a year as a probation officer, I have met people I think should not leave prison ever. There are bad people. That's not the point. Minor serial killer Michael Moses (in Iowa prison for life after attempting to kill my mom's best friend, and successfully killing several other women) is a sociopath.

People have tried to use my own story as an "anybody can do it" story and the fact is that liberal social problems provided the love and understanding that saved my life. Shocker, a long-term poor kid needed love and understanding-- and not lectures from conservatives-- to thrive.

Just because I will someday climb out of debt and maybe save for retirement does not mean that I could scorn another poor person who had not done the same. Pay attention, please. I was raised hyper-conservative. My extended family worships Rush Limbaugh. My parents were from generations of Republicans, and they were very consistent. They treated their family who were poor like they were people with defects, like they treat all people in need. I'm not talking about conservatives from a place of distance or unfamiliarity. Sadly, it is an abundance of familiarity and painful experience that tells me EXACTLY how conservatives treat poor people, even children. As I have heard so often, I just never should have been born.

Furthermore, we don't graciously help some poor deserving people and condemn others who are undeserving. Conservatives condemn ALL poor people, and then make exceptions such as "poor, but honest." You degrade first, ask questions later."

Don't lie about how helpful conservatives are. Remember you can't BS a long-term poverty survivor. I know who helped and who didn't. If they were so helpful, I would have met more along the path of my life in private and public services. It would have been more than a tin of popcorn at Christmas from the Mormons. Those conservatives I did meet were judgmental and useless in my recovery from long-term trauma. How many people that got in your face and started dictating your life have you greeted openly?

It is disturbing to have to think that I need to post my collection of comments about poor people from conservatives on the web to squelch the stupid notion that conservatives have ever been anything but cruel to poor children. The threats to my existence, regrets for my birth, and the vitriol that has a deathly emotional impact, all of it comes from conservatives, and I prefer to avoid the material.

The alleged life is sometimes unfair is belied by the fact that for poor people, life is always unfair. There have been no years in my life that did not include a major trauma ranging from homelessness and foster care to more deaths than I can count. And on and on. I am the very definition of resilience. But, I know I didn't do it alone, but with loving people, curiously predominately liberals.

Love is not lecturing a child that she should not be poor. What an ass to even think it should be done! Now, I can say with pride that I have helped people to build personal responsibility into otherwise shattered lives. There are people who are working and living decent lives instead of repeating the cycles of their family generations. And none of the hundreds of people ever felt anything but cared about or loved, even when I used discipline."

"Another clipper-- this has to be the single, solitary, most insanity-making thing about trying to engage in conversations, there is a huge gap in actual knowledge of facts. I don't step in with an opinion unless I can back it up with legitimate peer-reviewed research or firsthand experience. If it is one thing I am, it is over-educated. over-life experienced, and over-read.

So, I want to debate someone who can at least acknowledge that research, academic science, or scholarly work, have already done studies on some of the things debated. Much of it has made many of their points moot.

Same motto I have my students learn, back it up. Back everything up. How does one judge a source? By going to the original study and reading it, look it up. You can pretty much figure that most things you can imagine for research questions have been thought up by graduate students for decades. There are entire dissertations dedicated to just about any question you can think of? Want to know if 911 or the anthrax attacks caused more panic, look it up. I helped do this research, I know it is there to reference.

Couldn't we all agree to do this? Check with a peer-reviewed source to double-check any "fact" you think informs your opinion. Every one of us would learn so much."

"Nice obviously needs to be defined. Willing to let other human beings suffer, not nice. Willing to kill thousands of people for oil, not nice. Chronically supported far right nuts that advocate violence against liberals, not nice. Oh yeah, shooting eight liberals while they are at church, not nice. You have some nerve telling a person who has sacrificed her entire life, going all the way back to being the only employed person in our household when I was 8 because I had the paper route, that I am not as giving as any conservative. I took on all of the debt of raising my two youngest siblings without support on my own. I have taken in more people that need a little help than you know. That is nice. The rest of the article is BS.

This author of the article you clipped is doing a sloppy literature review. Taking several research studies, all of which I have read, and putting forth a thesis without providing sources. He is not interpreting many of the studies correctly, all of the counter-findings are missing, and he is at a place with an agenda. He is at the Hoover Institute, a famously conservative think tank, that caters to the whims of its benefactor source. Just like the Heritage Foundation, they produce scholars who are not taken seriously by most other scholars because of their famously inaccurate analysis and interpretation of data, their deliberate exclusions of thousands of studies in their discussions of research, and their subtle, but clear-cut contempt for minorities and the poor. See Sheldon Danziger, any book or article on poverty, for an actual scientific source.

In other words, many of the studies cited, I am familiar with and they are not being presented accurately in the article. But then how could you know that since you can't go check the sources?

Besides, are you familiar with how certain newspapers and TV stations put out anti-liberal propaganda that is so ridiculous I have trouble even getting up the energy to respond. Well anyway, the Daily Mail is just an unreliable source."

"Fox News research department. This is sickening just thinking about how my days are spent helping poor people get an education for much less pay than a business daytrader exploiting oil speculation who gives a tiny fraction of his income says "Look at how nice I am." It is easy to be happy separated from the realities of poverty or utterly neglecting pained people.

The premise is almost too easy to refute. Just some qualitative data from my own family. There are the people in our family that leave the weak to die, the Limbaugh sycophants versus those of us who actually sacrificed our youth and financial well-being to raise helpless kids. Nice right wingers? What a fantasy!"

"Have you missed every documentary, article, and even recent CNN special for the past 30 years? The 1930s represents the first time people became deeply concerned about the black family, and that was after declining for a while to be noticed.

The black community is struggling in numerous areas, and they are the first to admit it. I spend too much of my time trying to educate my students not to be so self-blaming or self-race-blaming for situations that are not their fault. Many read Cosby and blame themselves or their families. Then we talk at length about their own specific histories. Well, come to find out, they have been crawling back from slavery the whole time. Suffering post traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, and always, always long histories of discrimination, abuse, intimidation, and trauma. Since I grew up in a predominantly black community, enough so to be bussed to the white, middle class school, I *know* life in the ghetto. I've lived in public housing, placed there by the State after my parents' farmhouse was condemned, and they had no jobs and no other options. After they were both laid off in 1981, just before you family came over and took jobs, was an awful recession. It was the first link to break down our family. In my black community, I witnessed firsthand racial discrimination by police, family violence issues, substance abuse, but most of all, deep, deep poverty.

Poverty kills children. I have hearing loss due to lack of medical care for an ear infection. At my job, we struggle to keep our first generation, low income college students from succumbing to all the barriers they face. Meanwhile, I vividly remember all the privileges of the University of Michigan undergrads whose daddies bought them SUVs to drive around. Yet, you think they are supposed to be competitive for the same jobs. This is easily traced history. History, backed up by documents, records, first hand accounts."

"All of that history has been put into books by scholars for generations. Please read them so that you fully understand how reading has not yet been culturally reintroduced after centuries of not having it. The after effects of family's not being able to provide a lot of education is that children start out school behind. And people who start a race behind tend to stay behind. Or get worse, as poverty itself takes its toll. There is so much research on poverty and stress hormones and health that if you just go to Google Scholar to check out the research, you'd see their are neurological effects starting from a young age.

There is just so much information that you are not aware you are not aware of.

I, ME, This woman you are writing to is an example of someone who went from dire poverty to published author and scientist (see my webpage for the Des Moines Register article about our family's poverty).

I suffered and my five brothers and sisters suffered, and most of all my seriously mentally ill parents suffered, because this country has not had a meaningful mental health system. When Dorothea Dix attempted to get national mental health policy passed, Barbara Pierce Bush's great something or other President Franklin Pierce blocked it in 1854. You need to see the documentary, Out of Sight, by the BBC to see the horrific history of treatment of the mentally ill in our country.

Don't you get it, one of those examples you hold so dear--a real living, breathing, typing example--is telling you that your theories are not working or have not worked. There are children drowning under the weight of poverty. My brother who committed suicide at age 23, my mom's best friend who hung herself, etc.)."

"RS, what I am trying to stress is that even if I eventually made it to the indebted middle class, I am not okay from the journey. I am traumatized. Poverty harmed me deeply. It broke up my family. It put me into foster care, and led to dozens of stressful moves. It provided me with a first-hand seat to the ridicule of the poor; I carry in diaries... in memories... a lifelong record of anti-poor and anti-welfare comments hurled at me.

Just a little kid born to two people that desperately needed help, but would not seek it because they were anti-government, anti-therapy, anti-medical establishment, anti-secular, and they thought religion would cure them. Fundamentalist Mormons first, then Mormons, then dozens of conservative religions, all a part of my wild-ride childhood. When the State intervened, they were right to do so. Anyone who reads the Des Moines Register article about the battle of my parents to get us back from the State can see we needed to be put in foster care to get food and heat.

Me, this kid along for the hellish ride that was the 1980s for me. Beginning with foster care, then the further breakdown of my parents, and then the breakdown of the family, and then all of the responsibility for taking care of it falls to the oldest. That would be...Me. I have raised children since I was 7. I have managed a household on the thin circuit of public and private charities and services. I lived it. I know what is good, I know what is bad.

Aren't you even curious what might have went badly enough that one of my siblings commits suicide, two others are hospitalized for attempting to commit suicide, and only 2 of 6 children managed to finish college despite the fact that 5 of 6 have chart-topping test scores on all those standardized tests they give.

I have been working too hard since age 8. Ever doctor will tell you I am physically broken down like a person 20 years my senior. Back surgery for what docs think is likely injuries sustained in childhood by carrying an overly heavy bag as I was delivering newspapers to half the town. If you read the Des Moines Register newspaper article about my family, it will back all of this up. You can see a third party document all of this family history. In 1981, I was getting to watch my family ridiculed on TV on all three local Iowa channels. Probably possible to get that footage too, though I've never tried. Parents laid off from jobs, depleted savings, stress triggers greater symptoms of mental illness for both of them, and family situation is soon dangerous for children (two had frostbite because if was 32 degrees F in our house that winter). Child welfare workers at that time had little to no training in mental health and often failed to recognize the core problem when they were working with certain parents, including mine. They did not treat the core underlying problem, my parents often experienced psychosis, and left me to manage the whole dreadful family situation.

My dad was the same, broken down physically, dying at 60 this past January after years of ill health. Not just the schizophrenia, but severe diabetes and kidney failure and on and on. (All we could ever afford to eat was starch, and he should never have been having it, let alone using it as a staple). He did not get health care for either his schizophrenia or his physical health problems until both were too severe to really treat adequately. And then just as the Veterans Administration was providing him health and mental health services, there is a war, and his medical attention declines to almost nothing. He does not complain. Those troops just getting back need it more. But it was clear his health was not being monitored sufficiently. Nothing I could do. It did not take him long to die."

"There are several places where your thinking is not clear to me.

First, unless you arrived in the US without a job and then built a company where you employed yourself, then someone has *given* you a job. There are only a handful of the jobs programs you seem to be thinking of in the US like the Job Corps, and they don't offer many spaces in the program. This programs are not affecting the employment rate in the US. And if you are self-employed, then your American customers have given you a job. Do you need the slew of sources on hiring discrimination against black people? They regularly send two applicants with the same resume into the same employers and check for differences in granting interviews or jobs. Guess what... the black job candidate is STILL greatly discriminated against. Right now, in this moment. My own husband has been on the white "candidates" in these experiments, and he was disgusted with the level of discrimination he witnessed.

My conservative relatives would seriously dislike you simply for being an immigrant. They don't think you should be here, period. They are angry our government let you in, period. Watch out for their type at your meetings.

Second, perhaps it is because you are an immigrant that you don't get why people whose families benefited for longer from the prosperity of the U.S. would feel responsible for slavery. You see if my ancestors personally wronged a person, let's say just harmed one family, and their ancestors were still suffering as a result of what my ancestors did, I would try to rectify the consequences. Most Americans have a history here and all of us inherited what our country has DONE. We own the consequences. That is responsibility and I will take even if my relatives never owned slaves. I watched them benefit from the white power structure as all whites do. Those consequences of slavery, and the fact I belong to the group who until only recently maintained them, puts the responsibility on all of us."

"Fourth, what types of things have you done to become an expert in your field? Taken classes, hands-on learning, perhaps some experimentation, reading? Well, while you were getting the history of your field, the basic knowledge, the advanced thinking, perhaps the ideas for the future, I was reading every research study done on every aspect of poverty there is.
1) patterns of poverty in the US regionally, educationally, demographically, and historically
2) every conceivable variable correlated with poverty as researched against patterns of poverty
2) hiring discrimination experiments and the psychological impact of repeated discrimination
3) effects of residential segregation and evidence of hiring discrimination against entire area codes.
4) Sen's theory's of famine and his work on 100 million missing Asian women,
5) history of American successes and failures in policy in child welfare, health care, mental health care, domestic violence, criminal justice, and aging

Unbelievably my Endnote database containing a list of all the articles, books, and reports I have read on the topic of poverty and mental illness has reached 10,213. Meanwhile, I was also working in inner city Southwest Detroit in a program for people with serious mental illness. Our building had to have razor wire around it to keep us safe. Plus, I've been working for 10+ years with low income, first generation and disabled high school and college students. Without services, precisely 7% of the lowest income quartile in the U.S. goes to college. Does that phase you at all?

I have to thank you. I have been stalled on my book for a little while. Rather than continue this probably fruitless conversation, I am going to continue to summarize as many of those 10,000 plus articles I have read into a readable book. Being poor, I am good at translating jargon to everyday language. All of the facts will be combined with the narration of our *conservative* family's terrorizing trip into long-term poverty."

"Remember, although there is no stronger zealot than a convert, you are not the same as the United States. You are even less the same as the US than I am in many ways. You were not shaped by this country, you came later. Perhaps you don't feel the weight of the inheritance of our ancestors. Everything they did, good and bad, is part of me. I am filled with pride by a lot and horror by some of things my country has done. Only a child or a simple-minded person continues to see their country in an entirely positive light. Oh, I can't speak against anything my country is done, because my country is good and perfect and right. Sounds like the nationalism of Germans.

A country is not like a person in the sense that its deeds die and the case is closed. A person is responsible throughout their life for their behavior. Unless they lose their capacity. This country is responsible for its state's behaviors throughout its life. Unless you think we are now incapacitated, the country and its representatives have to eventually MAKE the apology. You can't say, well, those ancestors of ours created an evil system that is still benefiting us (or at least our skin color) today, but those people in the present who are still recovering from harm are none of our nation's doing. Yes, our nation did it. Since my country flows through my blood, my ancestors have fought in World Wars I and II and my dad in Vietnam, this is my country.

My conservative relatives put giant American flags off both sides of their pickup trucks to demonstrate their love of country. You can check out "Trucking Times" magazine. That's my uncle's self-made business. If you turn Mormon, he'll love you though."

"For some insight into when slavery really ended, read Sundown Towns by James Loewen to start. Once done with that, and once you are able to tell me how a people is supposed to respond to systematic exclusion that lasted until 1965, we can talk at a more informed level.

Remember, that all of those 100 years including the systematic *underinvestment* in those same people. They might as well have been living in Afghanistan for all the United States was doing to educate or nourish them. Then, upper class white people are making huge gains in education, while most of an entire race was not. Now, they are supposed to be competitively equal having inherited completely different advantages from their country. We are supposed to be an equal country. There is barely any positive movement in the direction of offering a loving educational atmosphere where learning is feasible. Read Jonathan Kozel's Savage Inequalities or Shame of the Nation to learn more about educational inequities in the US.

Here is a good history of the Black Family for you:
http://www.nbufront.org/html/FRONTalView/BookExcerpts/Wade_Nobles1.html. The Color Purple by Alice Walker does an excellent job of describing gender relations immediate post-slavery. Educate yourself. If you are going to have strong opinions, perhaps they need to correspond to facts. I don't believe that my expertise and immense investment in learning poverty and mental illness inside and out is meaningless. I won't accept that we even have equal "opinions" until yours are more informed."

"As a conservative, I would think you would be concerned about the condition of the black *family* as a result of slavery than you appear. Since the 500 years of enslavement led to the total breakdown of families and family lines for that extensive time period, and we have had only 4 generations since former slaves got the chance to try and repair gender relationships, everyone should be granted free therapy at the least. Slave-owners deliberately sent children of slaves to other plantations, couples were split up. Describe any other long term annihilation of families in history! By the way, you should be horrified to know that slave-owners deliberately split up families.

Having just helped one of my black students finish a paper on the Atlantic Slave Trade, I could drown you in the evil details of raw white capitalism and how this country would not even be prosperous without centuries of free labor. But, for the discussion, the history is less important than the contemporary circumstances of this generation of African American people. I work with 75 black students who come from families that never recovered from slavery. It is easy to trace their lives quickly back to a former slave. Their dire poverty, life under another 3/4 century of Jim Crow laws, and you expect all to be well overnight? In addition, the economic benefits slavery continues to bestow on the white descendants--coupled with study after study showing continued job discrimination--makes clear that to compete with whites economically is a stacked game. The least folks deserve is an apology.

Given that historical memory is typically many centuries long for most peoples in this world, are you actually suggesting that black people are not entitled to someone speaking an apology on behalf of the *state institution* that our Congress is? Maybe it should have happened 100 years ago, but it didn't. So when would you have the country issue its due apology?"

As a conservative, aren't' tradition and history supposed to be paramount to you? As a society, conservatives say we are not supposed to disconnect from our past. Do you actually believe that what is current today is NOT heavily influenced by the conditions of our ancestors?

For a conservative role model on how to handle the history of slavery, see Senator Sam Brownback (R), a conservative whose family actually worked as abolitionists. He fully supports the program for first generation, low-income that I work for, as do many other conservatives. Why? They actually have an awareness of history.

To see how a mature white person reacts to the history of slavery, I recommend watching the documentary, "Meeting David Wilson". It tells the story of how black David Wilson met white David Wilson, the great grandson of his family's owners. Their conversation has a lot of depth lacking in a knee-jerk denials typical of some white people. And for people outside the US or immigrants to the US, I can recommend at least one book that tells the story of how your particular country benefited economically from the slave trade. Throughout Asia, Europe, people gained on the backs of others. But there wouldn't have been any long term repercussions of all that now would there? Given the smallness of many white men who feel threatened that their being asked to share the country, I expect them to deny there is any advantage granted them from birth. It is just so much more noble and honest to see the millions of White men who can actually accept the truth and say they are sorry it happened.

It is simple-minded to say that the individuals living today under the U.S. state are separate from the individuals who populated the COUNTRY's history. We share--a nation state, its economy, its history, its decisions, the benefits of its exploitation--all of us. Pelosi et al said they are sorry ON BEHALF of the United States, not on behalf of themselves. I don't feel personally responsible for slavery, but I know that my country was responsible for it. Either you take responsibility for your country or you become one of those people who shirks responsibility. Not very conservative.

You fail to address the specific 450+ years of DELIBERATE family desiccation this COUNTRY inflicted on this group. This wasn't family dysfunction like my great grandfather who came from Finland in 1905 experienced. He loathed his family which felt only birthed him to work their fishing boat. He wrote a diary that mentioned only this about this family and nothing else again. He decided to move to the US. He was not dragged in chains, likely dying on the trip, to a new country to work for free under ungodly conditions.

I know damn well if my great grandparents were slaves torn from their parents and treated like less than animals, I would be kicking ass and taking out all the ancestors in revenge. And if our macho, overly ego-inflated white guys thought about the subservience and the ongoing structural bullshit that blacks deal with, they would realize they don't even have the strength to handle it. You whimper about people saying you should be part of the delegation of Americans who stands up and says, hell yeah, we were wrong. How could you possible handle the weight of anger from that much historical wrong? Have you ever toyed with empathy? It is often sorely lacking in conservatives. We still benefit from that whole 500 year time frame in ways that you still lose from it.

Unenlightened conservatives are afraid of taking responsibility even when not directly responsible, huh. This is just a head-shaker, especially, when the whites who benefit from all of the ensconced inequality lie about knowing that they ARE advantaged. You want people to be robots and not respond to GENERATIONS of abuse and wrong when you know damn well if your family history included that story you would be the most offended bad-ass on the planet?

"Brilliant , every black person can become successful as an athlete or an entertainer. Why didn't they think of that? Oh, yeah, that's right, many invest all of their energies in these two pursuits for the lack of other successful role models being publicized. And that tiny little group of celebrities doesn't have enough room for all the black people. So, there are a lot of unemployed, almost-famous people out there."

Most of my black friends are smarter than me. One has respectively, a PhD in biomechanical engineering, a PhD in Anthropology, and then most others have PhDs in various sciences. Most came from well-to-do families OR they went through the same kinds of government programs that saved me. Who am I kidding, finding a poor person in graduate school is practically impossible. I looked and looked for another one and found the other poor people were black. Then I discovered the research showing that only 7% of poor people go to college, and about 1% go to graduate school.

I know dozens of intelligent black people that have become academic powerhouses after a history of poor performance, and many more who could be. I know what it means to stand in awe of intellect that comes from all kinds of people including gay people or different races.

I just helped a black student in her later life finish her senior thesis. She was reaching for her goals after finally getting health care, in part to treat trauma--of course due to sexual and physical abuse that goes way back. She knows, like I know, and conservatives know, that her inferior education, lack of health care, poverty, and trauma made it very unlikely she was going to be competing with racially preferred people. What scares me is how insecure a person would have to be to deny the advantage. After years of therapy, often processing being black and discussing how perpetually frightened she felt, she finally gets to go to college.

Four years, and over 45 pages of hard-earned and fast-learned senior project later, and she graduates. Of course, it required intense tutoring to teach formal writing and research skills. Probably clocked 100 hours of tutoring, but that time filled in most of the gaps in her skills sets. Now she is caught up.

For some reason, this woman had gaps in her formal education. Hmm? Could it be unequal schools as so thoroughly described by authors like Jonathan Kozel in his books on school inequality, "Savage Inequalities" and "Shame of the Nation"? when federal programs like the one I work for (and not coincidentally, the program that saved my life from poverty).

And conservatives don't want to add "their" black history to the overall curriculum, because that is being inclusive. I know more about black history than most of my students (who tend to be nontraditional, and thus older, not just graduating--I'm hoping the younger students are actually getting more diversity training. It disgusts me that they were never told their own history. Most poor blacks have no connection with elite liberal academia, they are not getting this "burdensome" diversity training.

"Oh gawd, please tell me you know that slaves were initially taken by Brits, Dutch, etc. in the 1400s and sold throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Slaves were brought to the Americas shortly after Columbus, and thus their long enslavement was indeed about 1500-1865 specifically in the Americas, and life in apartheid was an additional 100 years. I don't start the timer on expecting a group of people to recover from slavery until they actually get to vote as full citizens. Conservatives think the damage was over when the slaves were freed. I have worked with way too many people who personally had to sit in a segregated section for "colored." Now, in this generation, in this lifetime. History of slavery slightly past, legacy far from over.

I like your cavalier attitude toward history, tradition, family generations, etc. Given your solution, we can solve the Middle East crisis by just disconnecting from the past. And 911 is over, so no need to revisit that. And when will the Hungarians get over those Turkish wars over a thousand years ago (seriously, just one example of long historical memory)."

"Yet another brilliant idea. If we just handed out Tony Robbins books, my dad's schizophrenia could have gone away and he could have president. Why aren't you in charge of health and human services?"

"I know a hell of a lot about poverty, living in extreme poverty throughout my childhood, knowing literally thousands of poor people and their stories, and having a PhD that focused on all the research about poverty I could find (from every social science field and even from conservatives). So, I am going to just pretend like you'll actually listen to the incredibly informed opinion of a person schooled in life and in facts.

Nobody said that the amazingly resilient black community is not starting to recover from their long trauma. But we can't expect everyone to earn a PhD, right? I spent four years reviewing graduate applications at the University of Michigan while earning my PhD. I saw poor people of all races performing less well on entrance exams, writing less well on essays, having less awareness of the culture, and then not getting in...happened way more than I saw any race patterns.

We were always encouraged to award points for everything else and then award the meager number of minority points (only 2 more than legacies got) if the candidate was really close and just needed the few points. It was very rare that the minority applicants needed these points, in part because the school draws elite students, and the minority applicants were wealthy. But, I saw legacies (sons or daughters of alumni) use their points to get in.

By the way, the program I work for does not serve people according to race. You are eligible for services if you are low income, first generation to attend college in your family, or disabled. Most of our 160 clients happen to be all three, but we have 50% white people who are poor.

Of course, if you have a two plants, and you nurture one while neglecting the other, you can't blame the neglected plant for not flowering. This is just logic."

I am truly sorry to hear that your father was murdered and your family crushed by right-wing Germans who scapegoated minority groups and became blindly nationalist. Nothing like that repeated itself lately in Iraq or Abu Ghraib. Since I am only a few generations descendant from Germans who immigrated, I am eternally grateful that my ancestors weren't involved. Had they been, or had they profited off of the Nazis as Prescott Bush, our dear leader's grandfather, profited and remained rich off of them, I would take responsibility and apologize for my family's wrongs. If I could find the people we wronged in Iraq and personally apologize for all that we did, I would. I am so very sorry that my country I love become the evil they claim to oppose.

Now, having been horrified at your *one* generation of pain at the hands of humans, I remind you again, Americans annihilated black families for CENTURIES. We destroyed families for generation after generation. Most black folk I know automatically assume kinship with others, because they are educated, and know that their people were tossed around like old rags between plantations.

I would think empathy and compassion would go with being nice. The dictionary may even mention it. You posted the article that conservatives are nice. Not so. Nice definitely includes the capacity to put yourself in other people's situations. You should be able to imagine three to four generations back. Can you even fathom being a slave suddenly freed after generations of slaves, but unemployed, terrorized, and stuck as an indentured servant on the land of white landowners for 50 years. You're black, so you are not getting a decent job until they need you for war. You can't live or work with white people. You can't participate in society. Within this country, this group was allowed to fall down in the wake of century's-long oppression. The U.S. did not become suddenly pro-black following slavery. They did not offer healing time or family therapy. They continued to act violent and threatening.

Subjected to apartheid that really only began to thaw in the 60s, you are expecting them to heal completely screwed up or nonexistent gender relationships right away. With what tools of family life were they supposed to conger this ideal? That expectation of a people getting over something smacks nothing of nice.

Perhaps if you worked day to day over years with hundreds of Muslim, black, Hmong, and other struggling communities, you people at a time, you would be less naive. Perhaps you would like to visit our *government* educational program for disadvantaged students. You are welcome to research data, do interviews with students, and try to find anything wasteful about the tax dollars spent.

African Americans have a proud tradition in the military, one of the earliest institutions to integrate. My friend Ronke's grandpa was a Tuskegee Airmen who was captured by the Germans. He reenlisted for Korea. But, he was treated like shit for being black, nearly died after coming home from Germany due to neglectful care linked to his race. His mother had to sneak him out of the hospital and nurse him at home to prevent his death. Standing up for America even as it treats him like dirt.

By the way, I suppose you are down with the high cost of prison as a replacement for social programs? Our program has demonstrated effectiveness in keeping youth out of prison and in college. Dismissed and discarded people can come back to bite the neglectful in the bottom.

First, could you please read up on Nazis a little more? They were right-wing and every historian and honest person knows it. How obfuscating! And if you can't see a resemblance between your ethnic superiority and belief that you have any say over the lives of others, and the Germans of the last century, I'm sorry about that weak education you got.

How do you possibly tell a person who actually lived poverty, has personally prevented it for hundreds of people, and who has the credentials to prove it that you know something more about what is needed for poor people? And your simplistic answer, that no one in thousands of years has ever tried...tough love, just be more demanding. And you are the arbiter of how black people should respond to their own experience? They missed your deadline for recovery because things are so good today. You really have to come to our program now. I want you to see first hand how good things are for the people I work with, and of course, I want them to see how a loving man is concerned about them. Put your money where your mouth is. We'll prepare for you starting today.

You haven't addressed that the trauma of long-term poverty was the punishment I paid for nothing I ever did. Why should children suffer for their parents? And since my parents were married when they had all of their children, worked in the minimum wage jobs that prevent poverty, did not get into trouble with the law, etc. you still have failed to address how you would handle CHILDREN in their conservative household ended up in poverty.

You still have not addressed the fact that people like myself are BORN into poverty and would rather have been aborted. You don't want abortion, but you leave millions of kids to wither in foster care.

And what of the 5 million Americans with serious mental illnesses? You have yet to address their poverty with your brilliant resolutions.

It seems being on the upside of racism might be fun for you. Why else would you want to be a conservative who mocks taking responsibility for slavery? I guess it feels better to be an aggressor. That's how child abuse passes along.

Russians terrorized my ancestors in Finland as well. When my great grandpa came to the US from Finland with no skills and no English, he was not as lucky as you. He had a child and died promptly in the flu epidemic of 1918. No career for him in the new world.

Part of me wonders why an immigrant is taking computer job of an honest American. Kidding.
That is not my attitude, but my conservative relatives would ask you that and not be kidding. If it as if you don't know who your real friends are, like the shooter in Tennessee thinking liberals are his enemy.

I do not BELIEVE the things about poor people as you believe the things you suggest. I look at evidence and then PROVE it. You can't find a single research study to show that your method works to end poverty (the Tony Robbins, motivational speaker solution to poverty that the world has been waiting for). On the other hand, in what form would you like the references I can give you based on science? I will continue to use up my vacation time providing you with some 300+ sources if you really want.

And I will locate the local Seattle version of the program I work for, and arrange for you to go and meet their director and view their services. We are NOT afraid of public scrutiny, because only a crazy person would not see the good we do with tax dollars. That is how the program has had 45 years of bipartisan support. If you can go and look the legal immigrants using the program in the face and tell them to just suffer, your niceness quotient will bottom out. And finally, for the 1000th time, you have NOT addressed the specific cause of poverty that I endured. What are you going to do for all of the people with serious mental illness that no damn motivational speaker is going to repair?


"I actually was on team that conducted research on the mental health effects of the anthrax attacks. I only interviewed people on Capitol hill that were exposed or might have been. It is interesting to have such an up close and personal look at some of the effects this man caused, besides of course the awful deaths at the post office."

"I knew the banks were crazy when they gave my 22 yr old intermittently employed, simple-minded younger brother get a home mortgage in 2006. He was not irresponsible, just vulnerable and easily misled. Since the average citizen is not a financial genius, they assume that getting a loan means the bank thinks you can handle it. That is exactly what he said to me when I balked that he got a mortgage. Of course, foreclosure came only a year later when he was laid off. You know, in the end, my brother was fine, but I think the bank took a loss. He lost the house and ruined his credit, but he has settled into an apartment, found a factory job, gotten married, and had a son. He is 25 now, and he is starting to be more developed. He has some form of autism or attention deficit or something. He did not finish high school until his was 21, and he went to an alternative school. He's gullible and trusting and ignorant about money. Its hard to explain but several of my family members, because they have mental illnesses, have limited grasps on the full context of things that are happening. They are easy to convince that if the bank says you can do it, they are being honest. This is not something I think we should bail out because it does reward bad banking. But I believe we should have regulated the field, using our government, before the problem started.

You really have no idea how ignorant about money people can be, and I speak personally of my own learning curve once getting out of poverty. I lost thousands through uninformed decisions such as using credit cards. I did not know how incipient they are. Once I was middle class, I realized that many middle class people pay off their cards every month. As a poor person, I had no one to teach me anything, including the urgency of paying off the cards each moth. So many things I never learned. Not about usury interest, not about investment, not about growing wealth.

The max I would loan my brother is $100. To me, banks just went nuts. There are so many simple people, including my own parents, who could easily fall for a bad deal. My mom would have lost her place in the 90s, because she signed onto a balloon payment, but my grandma heard about it and paid the last $5,000. Oh, the house was $26,000, and the seller believed my mom would not get the money and he could get his place back. He knew she lived on tiny disability payments and had kids."

"Of course, there is also the fact (based on a study by the same people who researched that John Kerry got too much positive press) that the press coverage has been negative more often about Obama. Even Andrew Sullivan acknowledges it. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/07/when-more-press.html

Howie Kurtz on CNN has been simple-minded enough not to analyze the type of coverage, only the amount, so the past two weekends, he spends way too much time complaining that Obama wins the media.

"During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the George Mason University center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.""

"YM, powerful clip! One of my students just changed his name due to discrimination. Due to privacy, I won't say anything specific, but he went from something approximately like Mohammad Zahir to something like John Johnson. He wants a job interview so badly having just finished his degree. Some of my sweetest and most respectful students moved to the US from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. But they are treated very poorly overall. We have a new Muslim Student Organization, so I am trying to spend time at their events to show support.

FYI, John Quinones, the ABC reporter on this video is an alum of TRiO, the program I work for. Another success story. "

"Ha, I love watching history unfold up close and then seeing how it gets distorted by politics. Actually, liberals championed "housing first" as a policy for decades, but it was unaccepted by conservative care providers. My mentor, who has since passed away, was one of the researchers that demonstrated that housing first policies were more effective for long term outcomes and less costly than the other way around (tradition was demanding behavior change first, then providing housing). Punishing, punitive, prejudicial... this is the typical conservative ideology on social programs.

For example, a Catholic homeless services agency, where my husband used to be a director, dragged its feet on "rewarding" the homeless with housing *before* demanding that they stop drinking or drugging or start taking psychiatric medications. Think about it, of course it was a liberal idea to say, just give them a place to stay, and then worry about their recovery from XYZ.

Sometimes conservatives actually have personal experience with the homeless (...or the mentally ill...or people with disabilities) and then they learn to see what is needed. For example, Stewart McKinney was a conservative who helped pass a homeless act in 1986. Then, there are conservatives like Jim Jeffords of Vermont who really stood behind children with disabilities, so much so that failure to pass proper legislation on their behalf led him to switch from R to I. I tend to find that fiscal conservatives who understand that effective and efficient government helps to manage catastrophic problems (like attacks from foreigners, epidemics, natural disasters) that include having a family member with profound functioning problems. Do you want them having only two options: a poor quality of life crawling around the charities serving the underclass or death? That does not sound life-affirming or pro-life, if you will."

"I'm guessing there have never been any rampages by Unitarians. They are typically capable of dealing with life without resorting to guns. My husband grew up UU and his parents still go to services every week. I never hear lefties inciting violence, why are the righties so aggression-oriented?"

"I'm at the point where I want my president to be more intelligent than I am. Haven't we had enough of a president who is thinking-challenged?"

"Good example of the strange bedfellows of the right wing. Half are totally against government... period, and the rest want the government to dictate morals and monitor the people in creepy invasions of privacy to catch "rule-breakers.""

"My dissertation research uncovered dozens of stories of abusive and incompetent psychiatric emergency rooms. I hope at least these woman's death will draw attention to an invisible and longstanding American problem."

"My father was a Wal-Mart employee for years (1991-1999). He was full-time and the reason he worked there was that he had schizophrenia. He couldn't get a corporate job and took what would come. His lack of health care is detailed here."

"When I was living in Germany during college, my friends and I went to a bowling alley in a small city. The guy who have us our shoes was fluent in English and French. We traveled to Greece, and lesser educated people were still intimately familiar with all the workings of world politics. Dulios and I sat in an Irish pub in Germany many hours talking to British military grunts and Irish migrant workers about the state of world affairs. These categories of people in the US would be largely slack-jawed when it comes to life outside the United States. We are so ethnocentric. On this Independence Day, I have no problem honoring my country. Nevertheless, the curse of low expectations cannot be allowed to take over our national psyche any longer. We are losing ground in the world citizen, informed thinker ideal."

"History will almost certainly give him his "reward" by giving him credit for bringing out the lesser aspects of human nature, exploiting them, and indirectly causing tremendous harm to the American people."

"For the well-informed, recovery is realized to be a lifelong process. Rehab actually has good success rates, but relapse is part of the reality of getting better. Each individual takes a different amount of intervention. I have worked with people who needed only one round. Others were successful long term after five. If there are any underlying problems like mental illness or chronic pain, success is more likely if these are addressed. Moe Armstrong was a substance addicted, homeless Vietnam veteran with schizophrenia. After being in recovery for a while, he now has an MBA and runs a mental health clinic in Connecticut. I could give stats and two dozen more people to Google, but my husband is asking me to put away my smartphone."

"Warren Buffett admits to having a lower tax rate than his secretary. Obviously, the tax burden should be shifted. Let us minions get a little breathing room."

"How would you identify mental illness in young people so they get early intervention? Since conservatives saw, and now see, fit to let children of the mentally ill raise themselves without government help, what is your mental health policy?"

"You are both so right. I fight stigma of all kind by being public and taking the ridicule. Eventually I hope the honesty will change minds."

"[Wonderful clipper], thank you so much for your honorable comments. I didn't see them immediately, because my Clipmarks mobile does not allow much exploration and has limited posts available. However, when I got on the computer I saw them and I was very touched. I spent most of my life being looked down on for being poor. It has been an exceptional long and difficult journey out of poverty, and I am so grateful to the people who support government programming, because without them, I would still be in poverty. Heck, I might not even be alive. Herman Melville has a piece called roughly, "What Redburn Saw at Lancelott's Hay" that tells the story of life before social services roughly 1850. If you can read it, it is amazing. I used to assign it to my social policy students to show what life before public concern was like. Basically, a woman and her three children starve to death with many people knowing about it. But, they justify their deaths, because she was a single mom. Here is the last line of the story. I think you will appreciate its meaning.

"Surrounded as we are by the wants of fellow men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?""

"Hilarious, look at all of the justification for inequality that has been provided by our right leaning clippers."

"I was rescued from a life a poverty by government educational programs like Head Start and Upward Bound. I was fed by school lunch and government cheese. No conservatives rushed in to help me as a parentified child caring for two mentally ill parents and five younger siblings almost alone until Upward Bound stepped in. Our LDS church brought us a rin of three types of popcorn every Christmas.

Through a government-funded program, I give 150% to getting my students caught up enough educationally to graduate from college and get out of poverty. My survival and ultimately my middle class status is entirely attributable to government intervention. This allowed me to rescue my yongest brother and sister. I wish it could have been enough to prevent my brother from committing suicide at age 23, but no.

I defy you to find a single "bad" choice have made with my life. Poor people can't afford to make any mistakes at all or they do not escape. No youthful indescretions are allowed whatsoever. Cough, Bush."

"I want to add that all of my debt was incurred paying for food, shelter, clothing etc. for my younger siblings after I was given court custody when I was 24 years old and in graduate school. My pay ranged from $12,000 to a high of $24,000. A lot of poor people I know have extreme challenges of a similar nature."

"Our family dynamics reflect this phenomenon well. You have to go back to my mom's family of origin. She grew up mentally ill, and they were all aware of it. When she ended up getting in a bind, the help from family was extremely limited both in terms of resources and how long they sustained the help. They are all Limbaugh conservatives. This group led by my well-to-do uncle (a self-made man) says that family and the private sector is responsible for caring for the ill, unemployable, the elderly, etc. YET, instead of helping their family, they let the government do it. They let Medicaid pay for their father's nursing home care. They let SSI and other programs take care of their mentally ill sister. They epitomize conservatives turning their back on family and practicing hypocrisy.
Contrast that with my "bleeding heart" where I raised my brother and sister without child support throughout their teens. I went into high debt to do it. Furthermore, this liberal can't neglect the poor in good conscience or make rationalizations because growing up ultra poor raises your awareness too much. Thus, I work in a job well below my potential pay, but in service to other poor people trying to get through college and better themselves."

"[Wonderful clipper], I hear you totally. Often I am physically pained by all of the pain I am trying to manage. Two of my students losing their homes to fire, numerous others dealing with HIV or serious mental illness, running out of money junior year due to maxing out financial aid, single moms trying to work full time and raise kids properly while going to college. Then the news shows the worldwide strife and it becomes too much. But I could never turn my back on my fellow poor people without being eaten alive y my conscience."

"What haunts me the most in terms of my social responsibilities was experiences like my 10th grade school year. My mom almost successfully committed suicide and I was trying to manage a house of five younger siblings alone. I remember so clearly how Uncle Social Darwin left me alone to handle the whole thing. He left me to handle everything at my mother's hospital bed while she was unconscious and all hooked up to tubes. I never want to abandon another human being when they most need reassurance, support, and help."

"And all Catholics should have left the church and even more so if their priest was an actual molester. Jon Stewart said it best when he said that there are crazy things said by white preachers all the time, but they are non-threatening to whites, so they are pardoned. Bush's grandfather was tight with Nazis, he was still elected."

"Don't you know that only the unborn and important people deserve to live? Life is for high status people. It's stunning that even after being told that justifying inequality is a weakness, many cannot help themselves."

"I have seen a lot of people with integrity lose when they tried to be honest. Its sad that doing the right has to come with a cost."

"It was nice of you to give us in the US some props. Like [another clipper] said, it's about loving your country enough to have high expectations. People talk about the bigotry of low expectations and I think that applies well to our nation. Plus, trust me, we are raised from birth to believe we are #1 in the world."

"Fascism is the joining of corporate business interests with government and the military. The government employing people is not the bogeyman."

"I'm thinking our responsibility for other living things going extinct still matters."

"A lot of research (from Diener and Larsen) has shown that poor people are unhappy, but very rich people are not much happier. I suspect if you have sufficient resources, happiness is the default. After that greed, ego, etc. can take over and you become unhappy because "enough" becomes perpetually just a little more."

"I think that being in orchestra helped me get out of poverty. It was my first class of the day all through high school. While I was dealing with a suicidal mom in the hospital and raising my 5 younger brothers and sister as a highly parentified child myself, it was soothing to go to school."

"Wow. The characterization of low wage workers was lovely. People like my dad who had schizophrenia, died young due to lack of health health insurance, but who worked hard as a janitor and Walmart employee, deserve the extra pile-on from the writer of this piece, since life has already been so fair to them. His volunteering for war duty during Vietnam further shows his laziness. Classy"

"Given that Finnish youth in their socialist society outscore the rest of the world in skills testing, this theory is leaky to say the least. But further weakening our public schools is ludicrous as a solution to the dumbing of America. I guess I was lucky to go to Iowa public schools where the people are wise enough to invest in education especially since it helped me get a dual PhD."

"As someone who has received government help and who provides it now, Reagan's quote is not exactly profound. Katrina-stranded people would have loved to see a functioning government be there to help. When your house is on fire, how many people complain about government-funded firefighters? The students that I went into work to help on a Sunday were not complaining about my government- funded help. Much more frightening is to have your ass on the line and to have your government respond, Nope you are all on your own."

"It was living in a FLDS compound for a few months as a child that helped me to see how destructive religion can be. The book I am writing with my mother and sister is about life after this sect. And yes, although I was 6-7 yrs old, I dealt with sexual contact. Luckily it was limited to touch."

"Except that they are fundamentalist Christians. Just because other fundamentalist sects do not want to claim them, their primary deity is Jesus. Indeed, they believe they even have two additional texts of Jesus' history. Being raised mostly Mormon, and then Christian Scientist, Seventh Day Adventist, and then a slew of others, I can assure you each espouses that they are Christian. You don't think one sect can say who gets to be Christian. do you?"

"How naive. My aunt from a good conservative Christian family is just one of the thousands of teen moms from the ...1950s. Humans have been having sex too soon for centuries."

"You can always tell someone who has not experienced war, poverty, or other traumas, because they romanticize them. Like Charles Murray, who wrote the Bell Curve, also wrote an article called, "What's so bad about being poor?" It made it obvious he had never experienced poverty."

"It begs the question, if "handouts" and taxes destroy a nation, how did Finland and the other Northern European countries end up with the highest quality of life in the world? It boils down to what the French told us in Sicko: You Americans fear government, instead of the government fearing the people."

"But the headline makes no sense. Parents are much more likely to commit child abuse and teachers to report it. It is not logical to extrapolate from one case to every school teacher."

"Are you saying that people who need medicine (like people with serious mental illness who use mood stabilizes) are to blame for this water situation? It sounds like you want people to die rather than take medicine."

"I was almost the victim of homeschooling. My far right and quite mentally ill parents wanted to do it. My siblings and I rioted, but the state put us in foster care before they could stunt us."

"How screwed up do your priorities have to be to value war over investment in one's country, its people and its infrastructure? "

"Hmm, on the other hand, I grew up with seriously mentally ill parents who did not do better until they took medications. They were born with the wrong genes. Nothing "happened" to cause their brain disorder. They needed treatment beyond talk therapy."

"My extra conservative aunt (born in 1939) got pregnant at 16. They made her marry the guy and he molested their two daughters. That worked out great. So, up until recently, she is opposed to everything government. Now, my cousin is paralyzed from the neck down due to a car accident. Suddenly, she is pro-stem cell research and she thinks the government ought to help people who are injured. Hmm"

"Our neglect of everyone with mental illness has been immoral for centuries. Get this, Dorothea Dix, in 1855, almost got a decent national mental health care policy passed. It was vetoed by Franklin Pierce. Guess who is distantly related to the Pierces? Yes, that's right. Our Bush dynasty."

"Last comment, because as I have mentioned to dulios, you are not worth our time, [stalker commenter]. We are accomplished people who can debate with other *thinkers*. Money spent on poverty is not going to resolving poverty right now. It goes to subsistence. We have reduced the poverty rate among the elderly by fathoms (thanks to Social Security and Medicare). Children remain the poorest, and they have few investments made directly into their well-being. Why did they take myself and my siblings away from our parents instead of finding money to keep the family together? Ronald Reagan."

"We are humans, not people to be referred to only by our economic status. Recycling people into poverty. Are they trash to you? I used to hate working with know-it-all "volunteers." Like Eva Peron said, "When the rich think about the poor, they are poor ideas." Bingo."

"I am a poverty expert. I get to say this, because I grew up in a welfare family, was homeless, went to foster care, went to graduate school, studied poverty for over 5 years, earned a Ph.D. with poverty as one of my areas of expertise, and I taught social policy to students at Washington University in St. Louis for four years.

Basically, {some clipper} is part of the problem. We have had ignorance about poverty stain the conversation for too long. I am writing a book on the subject to show how conservatism actually led to my family being broken up. Our poverty multiplied and was made worse by bad social policy (1980s)."

"Are you are tax shirker? Are you always trying to avoid paying your fair share? Are there children who are languishing so you can have the latest technological toy? Then, hi, Mr. or Ms. Conservative. Just keep putting the bills on the federal credit card. We won't invest in the kids and then they can pay the taxes we all should have been paying."

"In fact, plenty of wealthy 1%ers believe they should pay more. Of course, they are less selfish. Or perhaps they WANT to invest in their country. It's patriotic to do so."


"I disagree. I grew up in the household of mentally ill people who went untreated. It led to us going to foster care, long-term poverty, neglect, and sometimes mistreatment. I take my meds religiously because I never want to endanger my family in the same way. They may not work for everyone, but they have been wonderful for me. My brother who committed suicide in 1996 at the age of 23 never wanted to take meds either. I think people are too cavalier about dismissing their importance for real mental illness."

"Ugh, I would be disgusted if they added him. He did so much harm to poor and vulnerable people. And that snotty remark he made about only incompetent people working for government, because if they had skills they would be in the private sector. What an ass. The hardest working, yet lowest paid people I know are in government-funded jobs."


"You are so right about white people not being able to acknowledge these dynamics. I am white, but I grew up in the ghetto. I have witnessed countless examples of the discrimination and institutional barriers people face."

"I grew up in a house that had rodent problems--specifically mice. I laughed at this photo, because I had a Reese's 2-cup wrapped treat "stolen" by the mice. They do like peanut butter and chocolate."

"12-31-2007 10:20 AM
This makes me so angry. My father has been feeling suicidal, because he feels the VA is kicking him to the curb just as his kidneys are failing. He has been under their care for years now, but he was reduced in *priority* following all of the recent wounded." He died on Jan 20, 2008.


"I am seething with anger. As a formerly poor person, I know how little privacy you get. You have to tell the welfare officials everything as it is. It stinks to be poor, and some people seem to enjoy making it just a little worse."

"One thing though, if you work with people with *serious* mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, the holidays are a problematic time. Usually due to strained or nonexistent family relationships, being lonely, and not being able to maintain their routine (too much is closed, including service sites)."

"Ugh, I get so angry thinking about how they prey on people. They actually suckered my littlest brother into signing on the dotted line in 2004. Luckily, he did not complete high school in time, so they voided the contract. I keep thinking that the timing saved his skinny behind, because they likely would not void his contract nowadays. Naturally, he is a low-income youth with poor academic skills, a diagnosis of ADHD, and he is just vulnerable and immature."

"I believe this study offers helpful new information. I helped raise my brother by parenting him from age 13 to 18. He has ADHD, and although he is a good kid, he always struggled with school. It looked like he make get into trouble with the law when he was younger, but he has begun to slowly mature. He is now almost 24, and he has gotten married and has a decent job."

"I completely agree with your assessment. Native Americans have numerous pockets of untouched poverty. I think many Americans believe, "they all get money from a casino." This completely makes invisible the concentrations of poverty."

"When I was a teen, I wanted to become a judge. Mostly because I am named after a strong Biblical judge. So, I did a lot of research into the origins of law (used the library--this was pre-Internet). In the end, I was most impressed with the idea of being impartial. I was pulled toward a profession where critical thinking was supposed to the utmost of necessary skills. I do not feel that our Supreme Court is sufficiently blessed with critical thinking skills. The appearances of Thomas recently have solidified my certainty that he could not be impartial with such emotional issues. In the end, I did not become a judge because I think of myself as having emotional reactions to a few raw topics that would limit my judgment."

"In college, I did a research study on moral reasoning and political ideology. College students at a private Christian college were asked (by me) to complete a test of moral thinking process called the Defining Issues Test by Dr. James Rest. They also completed a questionnaire that idenfified their political leanings. Perhaps not surprisingly, as a group the liberal students scored higher on the complexity of moral reasoning.

So, here was the interesting part of the experiment:
After they took the test once, I asked students to take the DIT moral reasoning test again, but with the mindset of their political opposite. The scores on the DIT of liberals "thinking like conservatives" went down significantly. However, the scores of the conservatives "thinking like liberals" did not budge. They were once again lower than the liberal students.

At the time of the study, I was a moderate leaning right. (For example, I decided to become a probation officer as my first post-college job). This study was a great example of the first time that I learned through scientific study that liberal thought was sophisticated. I tried to learn as much as possible about critical thinking from that point on.

"Conservatives are not all stupid, but stupid people tend to be conservative" (forgot who said this, a British author?) "

"It is painful to watch a people in fear of their government. Our Founding Fathers emphasized that our government should ALWAYs fear the people. This is precisely what scares me so much about how much power Bush and cronies now wield. I do fear my government, and that should be my warning sign that things have gone terribly awry in the Land of the Free."

"My dad enlisted in the Air Force in 1968. He was in for 3 1/2 years, but discharged honorably before his time was up and without being sent overseas. He was mentally ill, so he was sent home early. One of the biggest mysteries of my life is what happened to him. Was he already destined to be mentally ill or did something happen in the service?

I personally believe if you recruit from young adults, you run a high risk of signing up a person who will become mentally ill. Sixteen-to-24 is the common age of onset for numerous clinical disorders including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

In terms of personality disorders, they can be extremely severe, but highly difficult to treat. It is true that they get less service from insurances, but if you work with these populations, it becomes clear they really need services. Some of my most challenging and most disabled clients had dependent personality disorder or borderline personality disorder, for example."

"This angers me deeply, because as a child, my family went through a period where we had no health insurance and very little income. I develop an ear infection when I was eight that went untreated. It was incredibly painful, and I ended up losing some hearing in my left ear. I do not want any other child to suffer this fate. It is unthinkable not to want to insure children."

"I've had an unusual life, but by far the most "out there" experience I have had was living in Creston, aka Bountiful, British Columbia. My mom was involved with a FLDS man self named Prophet Onias (she was easily vulnerable to his manipulations and religious "teachings," because she has a serious mental illness). He sent me away to the FLDS compound in BC where I lived with a polygamist community and attended a one room schoolhouse. I remember my best friend was named Virginia, but I never saw her again or communicated with her when I was taken home. Eventually, like two months later, my father drove up to Canada from Wisconsin (where I had been going to elementary school in LaCrosse) and he "rescued" my mom and the kids. They drove over and picked me up. My mom told me that "Onias" had wanted me groomed for proper marriage at age 14. I shiver whenever I think about my involvement with these groups."

"It is pointless to show Americans that they just switched from a cold war with communism to a hot war with terrorism. If you whisper boo at us, we ready our guns. We are a violent people, but only see violence in others. We say we are fighting fundamentalism, but we are using fundamentalist tactics (e.g., war, violence, intimidation) to appear mighty. Who doesn't see America for what it is, a middle-aged empire with an increasingly ignorant populace?"

"You are missing the point. The street homeless are not like you and me. They have serious disabilities both mental and physical. With only a few exceptions, most street people are not employable without job coaches. There is a whole research field on this.

The hidden homeless are poor people, often working, who cannot afford housing. The U.S. does not have very much low-cost housing stock."

"Okay, Negush. I will tell them to go to work. Now, I have worked with homeless people, and most of them are not employable, but since you want them to work, what is the name of your business? We will come by with applications and you can hire these folks. Now, since you probably don't want anyone who is actually drinking and drugging, we will only send those who are disabled by mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and physical ailments. They will need good positions with health insurance for their maladies. Then, you and I can brainstorm how else to help these "lazy assholes." Since I was homeless as a child due to poverty, I am sure there are children who need shelter, but they should just die. They should have been aborted anyway, right?"

"My husband was director of homeless services for a large agency in Saint Louis for four years. Honestly, most can only work minimal jobs at best. Their numerous problems require services to get them functioning well enough to simply maintain a home. Here are lyrics from Lazyboy's song, "Underwear Goes inside the Pants" borrowed from comedian Greg Giraldo:
"We're in one of the richest countries in the world,
but the minimum wage is lower than it was thirty five years ago. There are homeless people everywhere.
This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol.

And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on.
Why am I judging this poor bastard. People love to judge homeless guys. Like if you give them money they're just going to waste it. Well, he lives in a box, what do you want him to do? Save it up and buy a wall unit? Take a little run to the store for a throw rug and a CD rack? He's homeless.

I walked behind this guy the other day.
A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looks right at the homeless guy and says why don't you go get a job you bum. People always say that to homeless guys like it is so easy. This homeless guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants. Outside his pants. I'm guessing his resume isn't all up to date. I'm predicting some problems during the interview process. I'm pretty sure even McDonalds has a "underwear goes inside the pants" policy. Not that they enforce it really strictly, but technically I'm sure it is on the books."

"Wow, I got a visit from a troll. Makes me feel special. Who are you Mr204, David Brooks from the New York Times? Someone on clipmarks who isn't brave enough to actually show an identity. Whatever. I am NOT a professor anymore as my profile clearly suggests. I got sick of neo-cons beliefs that there are no facts, no knowledge, everything is just opinion. And all opinions are equal. Why bother with education if that is the case?"

"I was harassed by a neo-con student when I was a professor. She kept changing the subject from actual class material. The first day she talked about prayer in school (not a topic covered in this course), when I was trying to just go over the syllabus. Most frustrating, she had zero critical thinking skills, dominated the class, and angered the other students."

"Yes, Bush and Cheney are always there to remind us that in our alleged meritocracy, it is not the best and brightest who rise to the top. It is the most conniving and power-hungry."

"I can't believe crap like this can't be blocked."

"It is true that those think-tanks have been sent out into academia to dominate economic thinking. My first college economics professor in 1989 made us read a Charles Murray article (his affiliation is the American Enterprise Institute) called, "What's so Bad about Being Poor?" The article actually shaped my future, because I went to graduate school to get a Ph.D with expertise in poverty. These think tanks are deeply racist, callous, and anti-progressive. It is odd to think of them as any sort of "liberal" because here in the States, they are thought of as conservatives. What and who is considered liberal vs. conservative has become all mixed up here. One of my neo-con students accused me, "You are such a liberal. You hate the government." I just slapped my forehead with my hand in shock. She couldn't even properly characterize me to criticize me."

"The Heritage Foundation is evil. Robert Rector is the supposed poverty expert. I have written numerous times to directly challenge him on facts. He never answers. If he won't even converse with poor people, how can he claim to know anything about them. It is difficult not to blow a gasket reading the foundation's lies about poverty. Why would anyone want to minimize the pain of others by actually trying to show that poverty "isn't that bad"?"

"Having grown up in deep poverty, I promised my unborn children they would not be conceived until their lives were assured to be more economically secure. All my life, I have heard "pro-life" conservatives complain about me and people like me being alive and using welfare *as a child*. What do they want?"

"Look at tax rates during WWII for the highest bracket. Now, that was when the country knew how to do things right. If you don't like the infrastructure, leave and then you don't have to pay taxes."

"It's true, kids need financial literacy. As someone who came from deep poverty in my youth, I know how much I had to learn to catch up with my middle class colleagues in terms of my knowledge of finances. Poor people are often ripped off, because they do not have knowledge of how financing works."
"I can explain what I meant by people treating myself and my family like we should not be alive. I spent my entire life listening to alleged pro-life people, including extended FAMILY, complain about welfare children. My Mormon, hyper-conservative, PRO-LIFE, uncle actually believes it would be better if his mentally ill sister were dead, and none of her kids were alive. What kind of pressure is that?...the kind that my brother could not handle--he committed suicide. I am sick to death of hearing people claim to be pro-life while they sit on their hands not acting on behalf of the ALREADY ALIVE. People who were not raised on welfare likely do not know the sheer volume of hatred directed at us. Since I do, it makes me want to scream when everyone is so concentrated on developing cells. There are breathing people--not necessarily available for adoption either, who need our help. If you can't have kids, hear the hint, and start working on behalf of lives that are currently miserable. And not just infants who could become yours."

"While I was just a thought when my father served in the Air Force during Vietnam, I know the aftermath from watching my father and his friends deal with it. I want to thank those who have served, and I, for one, will always work to advocate the soldiers are not unnecessarily harmed (as they are currently). Thank you, sir."

"Wow, you are very selfish. You actually think I would give you or anyone else my DNA, my genetic material. My bloodline is MINE, and no government is going to tell me how it will proceed. If my family carries diseases that should not be passed on, and I accidentally become pregnant, I will abort. With or without your permission or the governments. Furthermore, how dare you ask anyone to do something as risky as pregnancy and child birth so you can have an infant? As it happens, I cannot conceive children, so I have helped raise other people's children. There are foster children everywhere. There are youth starving for attention all over the world, and right under your nose. Poverty in the US is plentiful--adopt a poor family. Your selfishness sickens me."

"The six children my parents had have a total of zero children (all are over 25). There are no children on the horizon. We all got the message--bring children into the world as underclass people and they will suffer. People are almost never pro-life. They are pro-power, their own, to make decisions for others. For example, some people write to me about *how* I should handle MY reproduction. Or they make suggestions about *how* to *overcome* years of societal abuse when they nothing of the situation. My way of overcoming abuse is to claim what is mine, fight hypocrisy, call out liars, reject myths, etc. THAT makes my life one in which I can happily say, Resistance is the secret of joy."