I think occupy wall street is stupid. That’s going to bother some of you. I am sorry for your hurt feelings but here is the truth as I perceive it: I am doing 2 internships, work a job that pays next to nothing for a lot of effort, am doing a dissertation, am a full-time student, a part-time blogger (which pays enough to keep the blog going and get a few products to review or give away), am a full-time wife and mom and have a husband who hasn’t had a job since April. So to tell me about struggling is futile.
I’ve been out of my mom’s house since I was 20 (12 years now) and I’ve never been on a government program or expected someone to pay me to do nothing. I am absolutely struggling but still working my butt off for a better life. THAT is what it means to live in this country. The hope and chance to make it despite the difficulty. It does not mean I get a handout because I was born in this country or because someone else makes more money than I do. I pay my taxes and I give when I can. Struggling is part of being an adult. Yes, I would like to see our economy change. No, it shouldn’t happen that we all get freebies because life is hard on the dimes of people that have more than we do while we do absolutely little to nothing to earn it.
If you haven’t seen the list of demands from the Occupy Wall Street people, you are in for a treat of epic proportion:
The first demand is that minimum wage be bumped up to $20 an hour. Gosh, we should pay the people who can’t get my order right at McDonald’s or those who didn’t bother finishing high school, the same amount of pay that an entry level engineer might make? You know, the person that had to pay for at least 4-6 years of college education? Uh-huh. Unicorns and rainbows, my friends.
Another demand? Let’s get rid of health insurance because it takes money away from those of us who are health professionals. As a health professional, I don’t personally take health insurance because of the nuances of health insurance and letting a bunch of people who have no business looking through your personal stuff look through it in order to “authorize” your visits to me. However, let’s consider having to pay every single visit out of pocket. In the Nashville area, a single doctor’s visit runs $125-$260 a pop. I can say this after being on crappy COBRA insurance for six months that is bleeding me dry and having to meet a $2500 deductible before they pay anything. My doctor’s visits? Not covered. This means that if I want to go, I pay out of pocket. You accept these demands and you understand that you are going to pay out the wazoo next time you have a respiratory infection. Some of you are prone to them. What if you get a bad rash that just won’t go away? A nasty case of poison ivy? Yep. $300 out the window PLUS whatever the steroid shot costs. See what I’m saying?
Free college education is another demand. Who is going to pay the people that teach you? As an adjunct, I’m not going to put the effort into teaching you for free. I don’t have time. And if everyone has a college degree, guess how much those are valued now? Guess how many people are going to sit their butts in college indefinitely and take out limitless student loans for living expenses?
All these requests for freebies and I’m wondering WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR ANYTHING? Who is going to pay the $20/hour? The government? The government gets its money from the citizens who plan to sit on their butts doing nothing or getting a free education which will be paid for by…no one because no one will actually be working.
Outlaw all the debt? Awesome. I’m down with that, but how many companies will be going under because of that which means how many more of you will be out of jobs and how much more will our nation be in debt due to the government loans that won’t be paid back?
I’m already bored with this. Seriously, if you are buying into this, you don’t really understand how the system works. Feel free to read through the demands and keep insisting that this is the way to fix everything. Feel free to keep protesting a flawed system. I’ll protest that one with you. But how about using all that free time you’ve got and the brain power you are wasting by coming up with real solutions instead of something that is inherently flawed and would only zap what little resources we have left, eh?
Thanks.
One of the remaining tax-paying citizens who isn’t making much but is still trying
Edit: 11/14/11 I just wanted to note that Occupy Wall street protesters are now upset with Jay-Z, who was attempting to “support” them by creating “Occupy All Streets” T-shirts. However, he chose to do this by embracing capitalism and charging for the t-shirts and then making the large error of not giving any of the profits to Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Wall Street Protesters saw this as a huge slap in the face and embraced capitalism and demanded some of the profits. Unfortunately, they did not earn them in any way other than by creating the idea, which they didn’t patent. Jay-Z pulled the t-shirts, didn’t give them any money, OWS chants “we are owed this” and the entitlement continues. In all fairness, Jay-Z probably should have given them some of the money. However, had he done it, it would have contributed to the entitled nature of the movement and would have left us without the irony of them demanding money from the capitalist venture. I can appreciate it.
Another Edit 11/19/11: This week, Occupy Nashville protestors invaded Donald Rumsfeld’s book tour dinner in Nashville calling him a war criminal and disrupting a $125/plate dinner. A friend of mine asked if I expected anything different from Occupy protestors and I said, “This is Nashville. We are better behaved folks than most and I EXPECT MANNERS. I expect people to follow the rules of peaceful protest or get out of my city. We are known for being a genial people and if you don’t want to follow the rules you can get out.” I think that what the Occupy Nashville people did by going into Donald Rumsfeld’s dinner and calling him and war criminal was tasteless and tacky. I am vehemently against the Occupy movement and I am disappointed in this kind of tactic. There is a difference between peaceful, non-violent protest and something like this and the things I’m seeing in Oakland and the other areas where things are getting violent. I’m disappointed in us as a people. This doesn’t feel like a freedom and power to the people thing…it feels like an entitlement and attention thing and I’m over it. See their triumphant self-congratulatory after-party here.
When we last left our heroine, she was at an Irish pub in the awful land of Washington, D.C.: a land full of people with agendas and horribly arranged streets…
We’d moved to a larger room in the back of The Dubliner and our group was gaining people like crazy. By this time, many in the group were inebriated. I was drinking my Coca-Cola (yeah, yeah, I’m drinking caffeine again–I’ll pay for it later) and enjoying the show.
It’s not my job to tell you everything that they did or said. It’s really not fair to them. Truly. They desperately need to be tattled on, but they all have their own blogs and if they can remember, more power to them. What I remember most keenly was our waiter. In an Irish pub, anyone with any kind of European accent sounds Irish. This is particularly true when everyone in the room is inebriated. What happens is that everything is much funnier than it really is.
Because of this situation, when it came to conversing with the waiter, I thought that it was hysterical that he wasn’t really Irish (look, he SOUNDED IRISH–if it looks like a Lucky Charm and walks like a Lucky Charm–yep, I’m kidding and yep, someone is gonna take that personally and yep, someone is gonna call me names). If you’d like to call me sauerkraut, go ahead.
Anyway, I made it my mission to discover the heritage of our waiter. As such, I refused to give him my order until he would disclose. What? I was in Washington. Disclosure is the name of the game. You can’t live there and not carry around your birth certificate, right?
Eventually, he gave it up to me and my friend Sarah that he was English and French. Sarah is French so this was an incredibly delightful conversation that ended with us holding our waiter up for ten minutes while we compared family histories and had a new best friend who was now required to serve all of our food “with love” because it was inevitable that we were somehow related (me being 1/4 English and Sarah being French).
And yes, I required him to say that everything had love in it.
This was much better than the experience we had at a bar later in the week where they wouldn’t allow us in because Caleb’s license had expired and they refused to believe he was over 21 even though he was supporting a full logger beard and it was clearly him on the license. And then when the guy who refused to let us in mouthed off to Caleb and Ben and made the situation ten times worse… Oh, you want to hear about that, too?
It was a long weekend. And I met a girl named Beer.
As an introvert, I just don’t travel well. I need a lot of sleep and a lot of time to myself. By that, I mean I need copious amounts of quiet time or I turn into a raging witch who will poke your eyes out if she doesn’t eat on time or stay warm or get enough entertainment…you get the picture.
However, there are times that even the thought of travel isn’t so daunting that I feel like I need to avoid trips. This is especially true when I know that I will see many of my friends and that the people I’m spending time with are those that have similar belief systems to mine. Well, that and I LOVE a good hotel room. Don’t you? All the little soaps and clean towels and beds that are made and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Leon and I had been looking forward to our trip last weekend for months. We were heading to CPAC and it was our first real trip ever without AJ. The plan was to be gone for 5 days and to leave AJ with our friend Bryan. AJ was thrilled because for him this meant: No bedtime, all the soda he could drink, video games and hanging out with the coolest person he knows. For me this meant: coming home to a spoiled child, worrying about whether he was getting enough to eat and wondering if his eyes were going to rot out of his head from playing video games.
I got over it and we went to D.C. There are so many things to blog about and they overrun everything I truly want to say. What this means is that you are going to have to deal with me blogging about it in spurts, as it comes to me, instead of a nice block of cohesive posts.
Washington D.C., from the point of view of someone whose city has little traffic issue, is a beast. I have never had to pay so much money to go such a little distance in my life. I will never, ever live there. Luckily, both Leon and I decided that there will be no politicians in this family. For the first two nights, we stayed outside of the city in a complicated little place called Silver Spring, Maryland. It was full of older homes and streets that are similar to something a 12-year old Sims player might put together. The goal was to make it to the Dubliner in D.C. Even the Jesus phone that our friend Allen had was confused as to how to get there from where we were. The miles of snow piled upon the cars and on the sides of the street didn’t aid in getting us to food any faster.
Remember when I said I don’t travel well and I get angry like the Hulk if things aren’t perfect? I was hungry. And I’d just realized I left my phone charger at home. My driving companions were fearful, but Allen is very laid back and Leon was looking forward to seeing his friends at The Dubliner. I’m pretty certain both of them were ignoring me because I was in the back seat, too, but neither would cop to this.
When we arrived, around 8pm on a Wednesday night, the place was packed. Luckily, a friend of ours thinks ahead and had reserved a whole area for our large group. Unfortunately, the staff at the Dubliner didn’t take us seriously because we had about 5 stools for 20 or so people. This led to copious time at the bar.
Which means no one remembers what happened the rest of the night.
As you know, smoking is a harmful activity to both the smoker, who inhales about 50% of the carcinogens and toxins within the cigarette he or she is smoking, as well as a harmful activity to the innocent people who are forced to deal with the other 50% of the carcinogens/toxins that float around the air after those people.
Risks of secondhand smoke for children include asthma, an increased risk of SIDS for infants of mothers who smoked during pregnancy, low birth rate as well as chronic issues that crop up for the remainder of the life of the child (dental cavities, eye and nasal irritation and mood swings.
Secondhand smoke is also a cardiovascular risk for those who do not smoke, but who inhale the secondhand carcinogens. It is also a known cause of cancer. (http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35422)
Representative Blackburn, I know that I am not telling you anything you do not already know. Clearly, you are aware of these issues and I am sure you get emails like these all the time from advocates. Honestly, I don’t have time to join any kind of association or be an advocate. I’m a wife, mom, doctoral student and work in a private practice. However, because I’m a mom, I have to take the time to write to you and ask that you consider what I’m saying, no matter how ludicrous you might believe it to be, because, as a mom, I have the need to fight back in whatever capacity I can.
The Tennessee Smoking Ban has been amazing. What I am writing to you has no bearing on the unbelievable changes that law has produced in our communities. Unfortunately, the minute I walk outside the door of an establishment, I am assaulted with cigarette smoke. There is no “15-foot rule” or anything that is clearly enforced in which I can safely get around the smokers to get to my vehicle without breathing in the smoke or having it forced upon my child. Yes, I can choose to not take my son anywhere. That is a completely fair assessment. I am a fan of do the least harm, however, and it seems that those that are doing the least harm should be protected.
This is my proposal Representative Blackburn. Remember, I told you upfront that it will sound ludicrous, but I think it’s fair. I know a bit about psychology and what I think may be needed here is some good old fashioned conditioning. I’m not sure what you knowledge is, but a scientist studying digestion, named Pavlov, had some dogs and he conditioned them to salivate to the sound of a bell. He did this by convincing them that the bell and the meat were connected. My idea is similar.
I believe we should condition smokers that if they wish to harm my lungs, then they will have to face a consequence. For those of us that are forced to walk through a wall of smoke to get to our vehicles, we should be allowed to take a clear watergun and take one clear shot at the offender. My idea is that, much in the same way a cat will stop when hit with the water, that the smokers will move away and I will be able to get to my car without issue. This would also encourage smokers to remain in their designated areas. It seems like a win-win situation. I can keep my lungs healthy, as well as those of my child, and they can keep their carcinogens.
Water isn’t harmful unless you are the Witch in the Wizard of Oz. It would dry. No face shots would be allowed or it could be considered assault. All waterguns must be of small size and clear so as not to be confused with true firearms and only one shot would be allowed per person per smoker.
I am aware that there are people who would be furious and see this as taking away their civil rights. I view this as re-establishing mine, Representative. I have the right to walk from the post office door to my car without inhaling toxins. If a factory was emitting the toxins, they would be fined. Because we are not fining private citizens for what they place in the air, there is no way for me to protect myself from the damage they are doing to myself and my family.
I urge you to seriously consider my somewhat eccentric idea. Thank you for everything you do to keep us safe and for your time and consideration in this matter.
Sincerely,
Jillian
*While this letter is slightly tongue in cheek, because I’m aware of the way my request will be taken, I’m also aware that SOMETHING needs to be done and I’m down for non-harmful vigilante justice. It’s an oxymoron. I know that. I’m cool with it. And I emailed her this letter this weekend. Mama didn’t raise a wimp.
Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
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We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
