How does that work? (Well, poorly, yeah, but I mean the details -you'd have to sell a newer car and buy an older car? This makes no sense to me.)

because her used car was above the value limit. It ceased to matter as she got most of her food in the hospital.

And unless they suspect actual fraud of some sort, why on earth put one more burden on a person anyway??

I hope things turned out well for your daughter.

car you can own. When I had a car the limit in my state was $2500.

I will add, through the whole shitty shit shit last 5 years, one of the low points, out of many, was an abscessed tooth. I remember crying and thinking "This is what poverty feels like." I couldn't afford a regular dentist. I called a tech school and the young woman told me about a free clinic I could go to at 7 am in the morning...I got there and they yanked the molar out. That is all they would do, there was no follow up. Rinse with warm salt water and keep it clean.

Suck it up Nancy, this here is the best!



We shit on our poor on a regular basis - even some that claim to be 'left' on this very board are rich, out of touch dickheads.

Thinking about this, I actually found the original John Lennon quote that has been posted here as "Granny's teeth":

"In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell -- if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist."

http://www.john-lennon.com/playboyinterviewwithjohnlennonandyokoono.htm

I am so sorry for what happened to you. That is so wrong.

That was the winter two friends and I lived in one of the friends house as they kept taping foreclosure warnings on the door. The thing that people don't realize is how hard it is mentally to get the momentum to get back up once you have been knocked down down down. This is the first year I don't feel desporate. But it was tough and there were many times I really had to work to keep myself in this realm.

I've not had it happen (knock on wood), but of course people have emotional reactions to events and circumstances. It slays me (as my mom would put it) that anybody doesn't get that.

Grampa lived through the depression, he couldn't believe it when mom wanted to take us to the dentist.

talking about the tooth, the string and the door. And I thought about it then. The pain was stunning.

I had a couple taken out more or less that way myself..

No comparison to a permanent tooth with an abcess.

because wages have fallen so far over the last 40 years of conservative mismanagement from both parties.
I hope the person who wrote the article makes a visit to the food bank while they're waiting. They're big on staples and usually short on things like fruit (which is what I miss when poverty moves in for another stay like a freeloader relative I can't stand).

And if it makes anyone feel any better, I'm much happier having my taxes pay for SNAP than for the military. You won't get any dirty looks from me if I'm in line behind you.

In most places a person is not treated like a functional adult if they don't have a nice reliable clean car, or a nicer rental or mortgaged dwelling.

One brush with poverty, for whatever reason, and a person is kicked out of the cult of working people, and it's very difficult to get back in.

What we need is a minimum income, comfortable safe and secure housing for all, appropriate medical care for all, in communities with good public transportation.

As a nation we could easily afford to take care of everyone but for the high-level corruption of our military-industrial-complex and major financial institutions. The uber-wealthy wish to control all wealth and property in the U.S.A., and the rest of us as mere "human resources" and consumers

The poor our blamed for their own troubles even by their peers living very near the edge of poverty themselves.

From an environmental standpoint, maybe we ought to be paying people to live a comfortable, low energy, low environmental impact sustainable lifestyle; without automobiles, without meat for dinner every day, without more than one or two children. What we call "economic productivity" today is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to both the natural environment and our own human spirit.

Literally.

this trickle down road many in the middle class turned away from the needy because they did not understand. And they let raygun and the tv prosperity preachers convince them that we were all welfare queens.

I think many of them know better now because they are slipping down also. I do not hate them for turning away but what I want is for them to finally look into who the poor really are.

We are the elderly who cannot find a job anymore. We are the disabled who cannot work. We are the family that lost their income because our jobs disappeared. We are the young who finished school but still cannot find a job with a living wage. We are the mother who had to stay home to care for a loved one and could not work outside the home. There are endless reasons why we are poor but I can guarantee you that none of us are welfare queens.

I beg those of you who have learned the hard lessons of poverty to remember so that when fortune shines on you and you rise up again you can look back in love and kindness on those who will never be able to rise because of their circumstances. Remember us when you vote.