Sunday, July 26, 2009

Welfare problems

Some days I'm forced to wonder if people really pay attention or not. I was on my facebook page last night when I ran across an opinion quiz pasted to a friends wall asking the question "Do you think people should be drug tested before getting a welfare check?". For obvious reasons that just set me off.

Drug testing is a wide screen that includes people that eat poppy bagels and shit. The tests are non-discriminating, doesn't matter if the item that gave a positive test was acquired legally, a positive is a positive. People lose jobs that way all over the country. As everyone knows, I don't feel Marijuana deserves the flak that it receives. The problem with testing welfare recipients is that it doesn't take into account the people that spend all their money on booze. Therefore producing a discriminatory practice that I believe is a violation of my rights. Drug testing is only acceptable in occasions that could involve death if you're not dead sober (ie., pilot, heavy equipment operator, etc.). Furthermore, the current layout of the welfare system doesn't allow for people to recieve any kind of cash disbursment except in extreme cases (usually wheelchair bound elderly people). You'll end up homeless and sleeping on the beach with your kids before they even think about giving you money. It's also damn hard to trade food stamps for drugs; everything is on a card these days.

The real problem within the welfare system that desperatly needs to be addressed is the people that bullshit the system to get onto programs they don't otherwise qualify for. Here's an example I personally witnessed: I was in town near the county building waiting for MY appointment so I could get the wife some health insurance to cover her for her pregnancy. I was standing outside the office smoking a butt when I watched this asian woman roll into the parking lot in her nice shiny new BMW X5 (a $40k+ car). She steps out with 3 of her friends and starts walking toward the office. I figured she was an employee.... til she stood outside and took all of her GOLD jewelry off, put it in her purse, handed the purse to her friend and went inside while her friends waited outside. When I say all the jewelry I mean everything including her wedding ring. About an hour later she walks out with an EBT (food stamp) card and they all take off. I'm down at that office trying to get insurance for my pregnant wife when collectively we have a monthly income of $1000 with $750 rent. Can we say FRAUD? The only reason this works is likely because her husband owns a business and falsifies the numbers to make them qualify. It makes you wonder how often shit like that happens. I mean I had to tell these people about the 1 share of AMD (worth $3.74 yesterday) I hold in an account I haven't used since the recession started or I ran the risk of my wife losing her insurance mid pregnancy, and this bitch is driving a new fuckin' BMW! So if you think for a moment that drugs are the problem with the system you're way off the mark. The problem with the system is the fuckin' people in this god forsaken piece of shit country. No one here wants to help the less fortunate, unless it also benefits them somehow. Anyone still wondering why the rest of the world hates the whole lot of us? I'm not. It's time for a revolution people. This shit needs to be fixed. How about we start inspecting the homes of each person that applies for welfare before we give it to them, just to make sure they don't live in a $500k house and drive a $40k car, while walking around town wearing $2k work of gold and looking for a handout? Seems like a better idea than drug testing. to me. That woman could've pawned 1 piece of her jewelry and fed her family for a week or more. Contrary to popular belief, everything is not 15x the mainland price here on Hawai'i, a gallon of milk is only $3.85 and flown in from California. That's all I care to say about this. You'll find a copy of the comment string I left for a couple people toward the bottom of this post.






Response to someone after seeing the opinion poll on facebook titled "Drug test for welfare check?"

Comment 1: lets make an observation here. They don't give out welfare "checks" anymore. Furthermore, the problem I see down here in Hawaii is related to otherwise well-off people BULLSHITTING the system to get shit they're not entitled to in the first place. Drug tests are a wide screening as well as an invasion of privacy. While I don't believe that marijuana users should be treated in the harsh manner they are while alcoholics can drink themselves to death by choice and legally. If you want to screen for drugs you should specify the actual problem substances and realize that regardless of what DARE tells you, no harm has come to anyone by way of the direct consumption of marijuana recreationally. I smoke pot.... daily. I have a job, a family and pretty much everything that you'd expect the average person to have for a "normal" life. I don't drink. So why is my intoxicant of choice vilified exactly? Whoever set this question up on facebook is a bigotted, pea-brained, imbecile with llittle....

Comment 2:
... ability for independent formation of opinions, and likely believes every line of shit the government has ever spoon-fed the public. Consequently, I believe that polarizing questions such as the above mentioned retarded shit has no place on a social networking site. for more on my thoughts please read my blog @ http://riseupandbeheard.blogspot.com

Comment 3: as far as the BS'ing i mentioned earlier. I was in town in the vicinity of the welfare office, and I watched a woman drive up in her MF'ing BMW, take off ALL her GOLD jewelry, put it in her DESIGNER bag, and have the balls to go apply for welfare. It's not the drugs you have to worry about, it's fucking people in general.

Comment 4: for reference you've got to be damn near wheelchair bound to get any "money" from the gov't

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Re"hash"ing History

Alright fuckers.... I left you alone on the weed thing for a while to see if any of your stoner asses would actually put down the spliff and sign the damn petition. I've been keeping track of the petition. As far as I can tell, only 3 of you signed the thing. I swear to Dog the next stoner I run into that starts bitching about how "it shouldn't be illegal" is getting the red smacked out of his/her eyes. It's a pathetic occasion when a group of people with a common interest can't get out of their own way to fix something. Need we go over this again? I hope not, I don't have the energy for it twice.

Does anyone remember anything about history? Bet you were to busy getting stoned to show up for history class. The Ford Model T had components that were made of Hemp. The original diesel engines from Europe ran on a fuel similar to hemp biodiesel. It was used as a medicine nearly everywhere in the world until the US got this "we hate beaners" mentality. We brought the Mexicans here to help build shit, then suddenly, when they're done we go "lets get em out of here, they're not white enough" and so the story of Marijuana persecution begins. Marijuana has a history around the world as a medicine and ceremonial item. Certain Native American cultures used Marijuana as a sacrament. Prior to prohibition in the 1930's the roots were commonly used in a tincture to treat rashes. Since then we've found that it works for Wasting Syndrome (the cause of death for most AIDS cases), alleviation of digestive disturbances brought on by chemotherapy, Glaucoma, and countless others. Fuck, the FDA approved Marinol which is nothing more than delta-9 THC with a fancy name - Dronabinol. The problem with Marinol is that if your stomach is fucked up, that greasy pill isn't staying down long. Hell, there was a Supreme Court Justice that called Marijuana one of the safest, most therapeutically useful plants on earth, ordered that the plant be rescheduled (for those of you that don't understand that please search for The Controlled Substances Act online) from Schedule 1 (which bans all research) to a lesser schedule, which would have allowed for the proper research to be done.

The large majority of people in jail for a simple possession charge are there for Marijuana. The Netherlands legalized back in the 1980's and their drug related crime rate has dropped like a rock, but they also cracked down on the "hard" drugs at the same time, thus lowering the rate of drug use nationwide. They generate a lot of tourism from that policy, mostly from Americans.

Hemp once grew in fields around Mt. Vernon, the residence of George Washington. Being one of the few fibers that withstands salt water, early sails were made of Canvas, which was made from hemp. Almost all of the hemp fiber available for sale in America is grown in Canada, where hemp farming is a lucrative, sustainable occupation. Hemp oil can be eaten, rubbed on the skin, or used to fuel a car or generator (as biodiesel). Hemp is naturally rich in good proteins, containing a nearly full set of amino acids. It's also no where near as hard on the soil as cotton, and can be grown at a much higher density per acre.

As far as it's use as a drug, this has likely been going on nearly as long as man has had fire. Wouldn't it just fuck with you if that was why fire was sought after in the first place.... to smoke a shitload of weed. Or if the wheel was created to help bring more weed back to the "cave". I doubt either of those are true, but it's fun to entertain the idea. Seriously though, no one has ever die from smoking pot, not even Bob Marley (gangrene from an untreated broken bone). It's physically impossible to overdose, except maybe if you could somehow get your hands on 400-500 high potency Marinol pills, but you've got a better chance of getting chewed on by a shark in a landlocked lake than getting that much Marinol at once. So, it's just out of the question.

What great harm has this plant ever done to society? Can't think of any? Me, either. One voice can change the world, it's just got to get out of the little debbie aisle first.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Hawaii

I'm starting to see why people are generally happier when they don't read. I've been reading the local and national news quite a lot as of late, and the state of Hawai'i is next in line for a good ass-chewing.

I can understand why they don't want more resorts built, we already have a TON of them here on Maui, let the tourists pick from the existing ones, there's no need to fuck this place up any more than it already has been. But I have to wonder what these people are thinking when they protest the installation of a solar observatory on top of Haleakala. The mountain was picked from a lengthy list of other locales as the best possible place on earth to install said observatory. The environmental impact from it is minuscule in the grand scheme when compared to the atrocities that the residents commit on their own. They want high-tech industry but the minute some entity is interested they protest the ever loving hell out of it, effectively destroying the possibility of any non-tourism dependent jobs. Most of the high school grads here leave state to go to college, end up with a degree they can't use in Hawai'i and never come back. They bitch about "Haoles" (which is the local term for any non-pacific islander) coming here and taking over, but the people you see littering most are locals, not Haoles. I was sitting at the bus stop one day when a car with some high school age kids (of either asian or islander heritage) drives up and tosses a half full soda out the window of the car and drives away with its occupants laughing. Everyone here owns a car and the businesses around here won't hire you if you ride the public transit lines. I was hired and fired within a 3 day span without ever once working a single hour for the company because I rode the bus. Walking around the streets here you see more broken glass, cigarette butts, and general trash on the ground than I've seen in NYC. NYC is filthy. The only places on Maui that are actually clean are the places the tourists frequent: Lahaina, Kihei, Wailea, Ka'anapali, etc. Everywhere else, good luck trying to find a trash can to put your garbage in, they just don't exist. Maui is also not pedestrian friendly, unless you're in one of the previously mentioned tourist locales. Here in Makawao there's no sidewalks until you get into the downtown shopping district, if you don't own a car, you're walking down the side of the road inches from traffic for almost a mile before the first patch of sidewalk. Now keep in mind that there are a bunch of morbidly obese people here, more than I've seen in just about any other place I've been (and I've been all over the country). If it weren't for the trade winds that blow over the islands constantly this state would probably have a smog problem that would rival places like LA and Hong Kong. Maybe then the people would take note of the fact that driving your car down the fucking block for a can of spam was a waste of gas, and an obscene amount of carbon waste released into the air for a product that no one's quite sure what's in it.

On another topic, there's a movement here to ban cigarettes from the beaches because the smokers here can't seem to understand that kids play on the beaches and will put just about anything in their mouths. I being a smoker, still agree with this, I put my butts in my pocket till I can find a place to throw them away in a proper receptacle. They still allow glass bottles on the beaches though, and on more than one occasion I've nearly stepped on jagged shards that you can barely see in the sand.

For all it's beauty, Hawai'i has a lot of growing to do before they can actually say they "care" about the 'aina. These people refer to themselves as kama'aina which roughly translates to earth children. Would you seriously do this shit to your mother?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

In defense of Obamaland

Browse some political forums today and you'll likely find that there's a variety of opinions on President Obama. Mostly it seems to be negative. You've got to think about it though, the poor bastard got stuck with a thoroughly fucked system and had to fix it at the demand of the populace. Everyone complains about the near trillion dollar spending he's engaged in since taking office. Figure this, Bush eliminated laws to protect us from things like this. One notable bit was his deregulation of the banking system, which led us to our current situation of bailing out banks. Once deregulated the banks were free to do anything they wanted, including taking risks with their account holders money that wouldn't have been permitted before, such as sub prime loans. Those sub prime loans turned out to be the the straw that broke the camels back. Compound that with the banks fudging their SEC filings and you've got a ticking time bomb. For those of you that don't understand the sub prime loan problem, here's a simple explanation. Sub prime references loans taken out with an interest rate that defies the current "prime" rate dictated by the Federal Reserve. These loans are almost always given to people with less than good credit. They end up with interest rates around 10-14% where the prime rate was 6%. People with poor credit tend to have limited means as well, making it harder for them to make the larger payment forced upon them by the banks. Hence mass defaulting. With all that piling up, it's near impossible to keep the country from slipping into some seriously ugly place without the use of heavy government spending. If it hadn't been for the $787 billion dollar bailout bill, we'd probably be in much, much worse shape right now. Unemployment is at a 20-year high with most of the country experiencing 10+% jobless rates. The author has been without work for over 8 months. Something needed to be done and Bush was just making it worse. We're spending $5000 per second on the war right now. That comes to $12 billion per month. Think about that.... $12 billion per month for the last 8 and 1/2 years. That brings the entire cost of this war as of the writing of this piece up to $1.224 Trillion dollars. With state governments across the country predicting $500 million or better budget deficits, it stands to reason that this war is slowly killing us. If you want to see the actual statistics on it click here. While I'm thinking about it, the author of this blog does not support any political party or individual, all opinions are my own heavily researched thoughts, I am not paid to write this.