Hearing Shakespeare, Living in a Closet, and Money Money Money!

I've got a lot of things to tell you about today, instead of one long story. So here we go.

1. Last Sunday I was driving to Cambridge (NY)to attend a presentation of MacBeth by a local troupe. Jackie had opted out, and I was glad to let her have some time on her own. The only new wrinkle is that I have to have my cell phone with me at all times, in case I fall down, forget where or who I am, or need to check a score (Mets fans are masochistic enough to want to keep up with failure). The drive to Hubbard Hall in Cambridge is a real stretch of back roads and horses and cows, with the occasional llama. I've done the trip many times but this time it took well over an hour and by the time I found the Hall, the play had begun and the main door shut. Ten minutes late and no way to get in. Oh, well. Now, class, here is what I did. I could hear the Scottish play from outside the door, the opening scene with the witches. So I sat there on the step and the Bard's mighty words. Bipolar reactions could be anything from tears to yelling and pounding on the door to numbness. Me, I knew the play would be held the following and vowed to leave the house at least a half hour earlier. The drive through the small towns and farmlands was soothing as was the fact the Mets were winning. A coffee beverage in the round slot next to my seat, and all was well. Also the fact that Hubbard Hall was built in 1880, and watching Shakespeare there is like watching the play over in the same place 100 years ago. I will get to it.

2.Fast forward to Tuesday, and I've got water therapy at a local center(see previous post). I left earlier than I usually do, and was heading south down the Northway (I-87) in a good mood and in my Saturn, with a reminder to get gas after class on the way home. I slowed down once I got to exit 11 (my center is at exit 9) and settled for a few minutes wait as a lot of cars and trucks, I guessed, were getting on. My class began at two PM. So I waited and waited, and waited some more, and we all stopped moving. 2PM, 2:15PM (maybe if everyone starts moving right now, I can get there)2:30 PM (hey, I've moved a few feet) and suddenly it was 3:30 pm (and as my window of opportunity fades like the sun behind the mountain) now almost 4 PM and finally we move. There's that bizarre angry part of me that says when I get stopped by some traffic problem, I want to see carnage. Busted up cars. Small fires. TV cameras. How dare you inconvenience me! Peasant! I am the great and powerful Tom! And my gas gauge is on empty! Out of my way, I have to walk around a pool and move my arms and legs. By five PM, I was home and the only actual complain is the fact that I sat seat belted for three and half hours and drove two miles, causing back spasms. But a number of people were injured in the crash, and one died. While I was sitting in my car I was listening to a Buddhist lesson on my iPad. Its always good to be reminded of patience, compassion, awareness. I hugged my wife tight when I finally got home.

3. Wednesday we met our financial advisor and started the talk that no one wants to have....death. Our adviser has been with us for a long time, and is there in good times and bad, and she has had a rollercoaster ride in her own life as well. We could speak easily of the fact that I am not as well as I was the last time we were all together, that I stammered, talked slower and would occasionally stop in the middle of a sentence and forget what point I had if any.  We started the talk about transferring assets, long term care insurance (for Jackie, not me - too late for me) and look toward other changes as time goes on.  One thing I have sworn since Jackie and I married, is that she will not be in the financial mess my mother had.  Jackie and I have worked hard to put a few dollars aside.  My parents tried but my mother's mental problems, especially after my Dad died, made it impossible, and she would not listen to anything I said. She was wiped out financially, and after her death I had to handle the mess. That and my time working in the Medicaid unit of Albany County demonstrated to me how essential it is to make sure you've got everything in order.  Wills, health care proxies, living wills, protecting assets, setting up pensions, annuities, it is needed - check it out.  I'll discuss them in another post, but at my last breath I'll know my wife will be fine financially. If she screws it up after, well, too bad.

MS is considered a disease of the young, but the average age of diagnosis is 40, a disease that affects women mostly (men do get it - trust me - or ask my father - only you can't) and you can live a full life with proper treatment and support - unless there is none available.  What you can do is determine for yourself what life may and can be, and how you, and the ones you love, can keep a legacy going but the only true legacy, as Captain Picard said, is how we live.

More soon. Thanks.

My 47 Percent Worth

Damn, I knew I couldn't do it.  I knew that sooner or later I'd get around to blogging about national affairs, when I told myself, and you, beloved reader, that I wouldn't.  We'd talk about MS and being bipolar and how that affects me, and maybe you, and families.  But isn't the big world view also about families and the decisions made that affects them? Or it should be? Instead of wealth and power and domination?

Which brings me to Mitt Romney's 47% comments at a fundraiser. He said, according to Mother Jones site:

[T]here are 47 percent who are with him [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.

Now I am retired after putting in near 30 years in the Social Services world.  I handled it all from Food Stamps, when they were actually coupons in a book and not an ATM card, to Medicaid, Cash Assistance (call it AFDC, TANF, whatever) with a trip to Employment programs.  These were and are the entitlement programs that are popularly(?) known as "Welfare."  The majority of the benefits go to seniors and the disabled who can not work, with a good chunk helping to support the working poor.  Yes, poor people actually do have jobs.  In 1996 Congress added a serious work requirement to AFDC (which became TANF - Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), and turned the program more into a block grant (this means: here's the money, here's your goal, you figure it out from there).  We adjusted.  Soon there were fewer people on cash assistance.  It was kind of a self fulfilling prophecy since there was a five year time limit on being eligible for TANF.

I don't think I'd be going out on a limb too far if I said that Welfare, in any of its forms, has ever been popular with the taxpayers.  Hell, if you walked around the building(s) where I worked, we weren't all that thrilled with it, despite the paychecks we got on Thursday.  We had the clearness to see 2nd and 3rd generation AFDC/TANF recipients.  Something was clearly not working, and it wasn't just the recipients. Frustration for those of us working in the system was reflected by empty desks (and hiring freezes), and piled up work so when recipients contacted the agency that phone may just ring and ring, adding to their frustration and on and on.  The assistance system as it stands now is fundamentally flawed, means testing the poor for minimal assistance, and Congress was considering more cuts in Food Stamps but fortunately(?) Congress did what it does best in the summer. Nothing.  Sorry, farmers, looking for help.

I recently read a post from a former local supervisor at my agency noting his frustration when he left the DSS building in Albany seeing recipients outside smoking and using cellphones.  Of course, county employees such as him and myself merely went to the back of the building to smoke.  We could use our phones at our desks, but only during lunch hour (Note to present administration:  How's that working for ya?).  I too would feel odd when I left the building and see this same situation.  And I think that's one of the things that makes it so easy to dump on these assistance programs.

You can see it.  You can drive around cities in I would guess the entire country and find areas of poverty.  People are standing around the welfare building.  A semi-hobby of mine is when I was traveling to find the welfare department for that city/county.  And there you are driving by, going to work or something important to you, and those people (sorry, "those people" - if you have any racist tendencies, please fill in the group you don't like of your choice) are standing there in front of those buildings.  Why don't they get a job?  I mean, money for nothing and kicks for free (we'd provide the kicks, or security would.  Ah, power.).

Poverty is real.  Drive through the same cities I did and thousands more I won't be able to. There are areas that just don't make the video.  I live down the road from posh Saratoga Springs which brings tourists galore every summer.   Right near the swell homes and mansions and race tracks are dilapidated homes that people still live in.  Glad to provide a tour.  Infested public housing visits a speciality.

I hope, and I think there may be some validity, that that gut "Get a job!" reaction is one that hides the more serious thought of concern for people in serious trouble, or thinking of the fact that you yourself are living paycheck to paycheck, and are not that far from not being able to feed your family.  

We think in two ways - love and fear.

All right, I'm supposed to be dealing with MS and BP here.  And here's how I barely connect the conditions and my Department of Social Services years (aside from the stress from my DSS years, which you might detect in the writing, added to MS and BP symptoms).  My wife Jackie and I attended a presentation at the local MS Society last week.  These are informative little get togethers, this one dealing with the yucky details of wills, living wills, funeral preplanning and the like, but always good pizzas and subs to nosh while meeting other folks dealing with MS.  One gentleman, older and using an oxygen tank, asked about  a supplemental needs trust.  Click to the left if you want to know what it is.  Anyway, what did get me was his comment:

"Those people in Medicaid in Albany County don't know nothing.  That place is a joke!"

My wife and I shared a look of knowing.  But here was a man trying to find help and stated that he was being blocked.  Long ago and far away, his concerns would have ended up on my desk as I was the supervisor of that unit.  A couple of folks who knew my background at the meeting looked over at me and smiled at my smile.  DSS a joke? I don't know.  I'm not there (and admit there are days I wish I could be, for even in my dreams I am there just helping out) and have little contact with staff there now, except for old friends.  Could I have solved the gentleman's problem if I was still in the chair? Dunno, and never will.

This man, as far as I could tell, is part of Mr. Romney's 47%.  Looking to the government for assistance and, oddly, asking the government to not count at least part of his income (a pension of some sort) so he could qualify for more assistance.  I would hazard a guess this guy pays no income tax, but does his part with other local taxes such as sales tax.  I do pay income taxes on my government pension (New York State - County employee) but I doubt I'd get much of a break with any proposals.  However, I am DEPENDENT on that income (granted I worked for it in the past), and also DEPENDENT for my health insurance, which doles out to pay for the many doctors and prescriptions.  I could try working but those of you who know with both MS and BP I'm not very helpful most of the day.  But now and then...

Like the country song goes: I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm good once as I ever was.

So yes, Mr. Romney, I am dependent on that, and I do have an entitlement feeling.  I worked hard for these public benefits, at least I think I did, and now as these disorders take greater control of my life, I will be dependent upon the health care system to keep me going for as long as I can.  Whoever is in charge over the next four years may affect that health care system, assuming Congress does anything else except send me postcards telling me what a great job they're doing.  So I am watching.

One last thing.  We spend at the federal level approximately 13 billion dollars a year on TANF.  We have spent approximately 1.376 TRILLION dollars on the Afghan and Iraq wars in the past ten years (or 125 billion dollars a year).  I'm fairly sure that no one on my staff killed any of the recipients we worked with, though there were days when rocket launchers were requested.  I kept mine locked up.

You don't see the war.  Maybe the coffins. But you can't tell the coffin to get a job.  It's got one.

More later. Thanks for reading.