The working poor are worried. I grew up in an area of the Hill Country which is prosperous and even high-faluting now, but back in the 60's, it was rural poverty. My husband grew up in a West Texas oil town when there were lots of good jobs in oil and gas. He never saw the wages of poverty like I did. My family was not poor, but many of my classmates were.
It brought tears to my eyes to think of the kids I saw coming to school hungry. I remember seeing kids with bow legs from rickets. I remember a girl who was blind in one eye. That might have been something seeing a doctor could have remediated. I remember one boy, wearing the same pair of glasses year after year held together with tape and paper clips. I saw a kid come to school without shoes. That was life in Kyle TX until about the 80's. Read the first volume of Robert A. Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. The Hill Country had still not pulled out of its deep poverty by the time Lyndon was president. [I have other stories about Lyndon and the White House helicopter flying over our ranch.]
And the people back then most vocally looking down on the poor were those who were just one lost paycheck away from being in the exact same position. Many times, heaping contempt on the poor is really an expression of fear that they will be next. And/or it is a way to distance themselves from the [unnecessary] shame of poverty. Of course, most of the trolls Michelle encountered are just pure trolling. But sometimes, those bragging about working three jobs and never taking handouts are protesting over much about their deepest fear.
Poverty [or society's treatment of it] messes with people's minds. A zero-sum mindset continues for generations. They see anything "given" to someone else as something coming straight out of their pocket. And Republicans in power want to create an underclass once again because people with this zero-sum mindset are easily manipulated through fear of the other.
I am not so sure we can't get rank and file Republicans to rebel against what Republicans are fixing to do to them. After all, these same yahoos' great-grandparents and grandparents voted for FDR.
Thanks for sharing that, Cynthia. The 1960s wasn’t that long ago. You’re absolutely right, so much of that contempt comes from fear and proximity. People don’t want to face how close they are to poverty themselves.
Off topic, but did you see in the DMN that Pritzker is headlining a big Dallas County Democrats fundraiser? Interesting. I like how Pritzker is standing up for Texas. Also kind of smart for a guy who is probably going to run for president.
I’ve argued with people over him, who want to convince me he's one of the “good billionaires,” but I don’t buy the idea that billionaires can be good for democracy.
The general consensus is that in order to become a billionaire, you have to extract far more value from people than you ever return. That level of accumulation usually comes from exploitation somewhere along the line, like wages, land, labor, or policy.
I don’t think it’s discrimination to question that; but they probably put it some way like, “there’s no such thing as an ethical billionaire” or something like that.
Ok thanks for the explanation. I know he has a lot of inherited wealth and I do not know of his charitable giving, like the Gates, but I will look into it because I think how one uses their wealth makes a lot of difference to me.
That’s so sad. My mother used to say the Texas Hill Country was the best-kept secret in the world. Well, no more. God love him for trying to save it. Southwest Texas State now Texas State started getting a reputation as a party school in the 70’s. Apparently, the partying has only gotten worse.
Bob appointed me as hays dem party shadow chair...i ran the party for a while and financed the GOTV........because soechting was a huge tool/disinterested absentee chair....he failed foarward and became the state chair*........
i organized the Hays County Hootenanny held in Bob's barn..Mauro was there, Mad Dog Mattox, Ann Richards people......Ed Wendlerr if u knew him
*if ur wondering how the worlds worst county chair became state chair...think back
laminack and o'quinn had won a $20B tobacco settlement....laminack and o'quinns cut was a couple of billion a piece..o'quinn bought the mccoy ranch along the Blanco....soecthing, an associate attorney , was supposed to bring $$$$ to both jobs......county chair and state chair......he didn't
that was when Texas Dems were basically for sale to the highest bidder
This sounds like what the 70’s? I graduated from Hays High 1978, then went off to Baylor, then up here to Tarrant County in 82. So, I didn’t get to meet any of those guys although I certainly know who they are. My grandfather was pretty active in Democratic Party politics from the 40’s to, I don’t know till he died in 93.
His name was H.Y. Price, Jr. and he owned the San Marcos Telephone Company. Bob and Tutta were out at Papa’s house in Kyle all the time. Jeff was the editor of the Lariat at Baylor during the whole NOze Bros, Playboy thing. I remember Ralph Yarbrough and Jake Pickle being out at the house in Kyle. Jake Pickle gave me a dill pickle campaign pin.
When i was there Bob owned the Hays County Free Press....Jeff worked for the paper .....
i did a reverse CP...went down to the small burg of San Marcos in 98 after life in the big cities. TCU BTW....my condolences
loved it, loved Bob.........
up in FTW...my dad was a successful engineer and Episcopalian....they had a smart social circle....Ralph Yarbourgoh was a household name ....i don't know my parents politics but in the 60's and 70's u could talk politics>
My good friend , Marion Johnson , was a USDA oil conservation officer in San Marcos....he was there when they built 3 flood control dams above San Marcos courtesy of the Honorable Jake Pickle. Marion would mention Jake about every other sentence.
Ships that pass in the night. LOL Things were more hopeful back then, for sure. I don’t think people realize that there were out and proud liberals, progressives and New Deal Democrats back then. And some of us are still here. Ann Richards and Molly Ivins weren’t sui generis.
Inequality of wealth in the U.S. now exceeds levels that led to the Great Depression. The best selling book "1929" is warning for today about how greed, incompetence and corruption can devastate an economy. Right now the government should be strengthening social safety nets and increasing financial guard rails, but it's doing the exact opposite.
As Walt Kelly said via Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." If we have no compassion for our neighbors in need then that statement describes reality. Rich S, Octogenarian and Contrarian
I wish you were on the ballot. Your compassion, sincerity, and ability to articulate the problems and real solutions without the political bs is exactly what we need in our government. Until then, thank you for keeping us informed and inspired with your writings.
Reading this made me sad. Sad that atheists sometimes can be more Christian than Christians. Christians (including Popes, Bishops and Priest) should be speaking on all platforms that we should not want this for Our Country!
As a Home Economics teacher I did see my students hungry. Since some of my classes were cooking classes they had a chance to eat in class once or twice a semester. And from my own lunch. ☺️ Since I’m not there; I pray whoever is can afford to feed them snacks.
all the women i ever knew on the lone star card were single mom's ..........
once picked up a girl at a bus stop...heavily pregnant....dusk.....she was waiting for a bus...i gingerly approached and asked if she needed help. she was getting off her shift at the Steak and Shake on Overton Ridge...she was big fat prego...her boss didn't offer her a ride home, her co-workers didn't offer her a ride home........
long story short i took her to get her meds, took her grocery shopping, went to the ATM and got here some money
when we arrived at her place do u know what she said?
"No one has ever helped me before."
That's who MAGA wants to starve or feed em covid or deny maternal care too.
----
i spent some time this weekend with and old friend, she had 2 degrees, a professional career, adopted kids, was a close friend of mine and my family.
She is die hard MAGA.......i can't for the life of me figure out why. her husband is a real jerk. maybe she folded to accommodate him..maybe living in arkansas all these years.....but i can't figure out why a perfectly compassionate person could worship the rapist felon and now out and out criminal rip off artist killing people in the gulf of mexico
no relenting gang...even if a few R shows a pulse, the vast majority still want to see u and i swing from the gallows
The working poor are worried. I grew up in an area of the Hill Country which is prosperous and even high-faluting now, but back in the 60's, it was rural poverty. My husband grew up in a West Texas oil town when there were lots of good jobs in oil and gas. He never saw the wages of poverty like I did. My family was not poor, but many of my classmates were.
It brought tears to my eyes to think of the kids I saw coming to school hungry. I remember seeing kids with bow legs from rickets. I remember a girl who was blind in one eye. That might have been something seeing a doctor could have remediated. I remember one boy, wearing the same pair of glasses year after year held together with tape and paper clips. I saw a kid come to school without shoes. That was life in Kyle TX until about the 80's. Read the first volume of Robert A. Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. The Hill Country had still not pulled out of its deep poverty by the time Lyndon was president. [I have other stories about Lyndon and the White House helicopter flying over our ranch.]
And the people back then most vocally looking down on the poor were those who were just one lost paycheck away from being in the exact same position. Many times, heaping contempt on the poor is really an expression of fear that they will be next. And/or it is a way to distance themselves from the [unnecessary] shame of poverty. Of course, most of the trolls Michelle encountered are just pure trolling. But sometimes, those bragging about working three jobs and never taking handouts are protesting over much about their deepest fear.
Poverty [or society's treatment of it] messes with people's minds. A zero-sum mindset continues for generations. They see anything "given" to someone else as something coming straight out of their pocket. And Republicans in power want to create an underclass once again because people with this zero-sum mindset are easily manipulated through fear of the other.
I am not so sure we can't get rank and file Republicans to rebel against what Republicans are fixing to do to them. After all, these same yahoos' great-grandparents and grandparents voted for FDR.
Thanks for sharing that, Cynthia. The 1960s wasn’t that long ago. You’re absolutely right, so much of that contempt comes from fear and proximity. People don’t want to face how close they are to poverty themselves.
Off topic, but did you see in the DMN that Pritzker is headlining a big Dallas County Democrats fundraiser? Interesting. I like how Pritzker is standing up for Texas. Also kind of smart for a guy who is probably going to run for president.
I’ve argued with people over him, who want to convince me he's one of the “good billionaires,” but I don’t buy the idea that billionaires can be good for democracy.
Someone else said that to me also, other than you. I don't know though. In a way it sounds discriminatory. Much to think about.
The general consensus is that in order to become a billionaire, you have to extract far more value from people than you ever return. That level of accumulation usually comes from exploitation somewhere along the line, like wages, land, labor, or policy.
I don’t think it’s discrimination to question that; but they probably put it some way like, “there’s no such thing as an ethical billionaire” or something like that.
Ok thanks for the explanation. I know he has a lot of inherited wealth and I do not know of his charitable giving, like the Gates, but I will look into it because I think how one uses their wealth makes a lot of difference to me.
i used to pal around with bob barton
Dude! I was a year or so behind Jeff Barton at Baylor. The Bartons were family friends.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/travel/san-marcos-river-retreat-tubing-trash/?utm_source=texasmonthly&utm_medium=email&user_email_address=80d33819e3b54f63ea79f442a10a9c887ef163dca4967db3ab3a29db91efd9ac&utm_campaign=TM%20This%20Week%2010-24-25&utm_term=TM%20This%20Week
That’s so sad. My mother used to say the Texas Hill Country was the best-kept secret in the world. Well, no more. God love him for trying to save it. Southwest Texas State now Texas State started getting a reputation as a party school in the 70’s. Apparently, the partying has only gotten worse.
Bob appointed me as hays dem party shadow chair...i ran the party for a while and financed the GOTV........because soechting was a huge tool/disinterested absentee chair....he failed foarward and became the state chair*........
i organized the Hays County Hootenanny held in Bob's barn..Mauro was there, Mad Dog Mattox, Ann Richards people......Ed Wendlerr if u knew him
*if ur wondering how the worlds worst county chair became state chair...think back
laminack and o'quinn had won a $20B tobacco settlement....laminack and o'quinns cut was a couple of billion a piece..o'quinn bought the mccoy ranch along the Blanco....soecthing, an associate attorney , was supposed to bring $$$$ to both jobs......county chair and state chair......he didn't
that was when Texas Dems were basically for sale to the highest bidder
I knew Jeff a little bit......
This sounds like what the 70’s? I graduated from Hays High 1978, then went off to Baylor, then up here to Tarrant County in 82. So, I didn’t get to meet any of those guys although I certainly know who they are. My grandfather was pretty active in Democratic Party politics from the 40’s to, I don’t know till he died in 93.
His name was H.Y. Price, Jr. and he owned the San Marcos Telephone Company. Bob and Tutta were out at Papa’s house in Kyle all the time. Jeff was the editor of the Lariat at Baylor during the whole NOze Bros, Playboy thing. I remember Ralph Yarbrough and Jake Pickle being out at the house in Kyle. Jake Pickle gave me a dill pickle campaign pin.
When i was there Bob owned the Hays County Free Press....Jeff worked for the paper .....
i did a reverse CP...went down to the small burg of San Marcos in 98 after life in the big cities. TCU BTW....my condolences
loved it, loved Bob.........
up in FTW...my dad was a successful engineer and Episcopalian....they had a smart social circle....Ralph Yarbourgoh was a household name ....i don't know my parents politics but in the 60's and 70's u could talk politics>
My good friend , Marion Johnson , was a USDA oil conservation officer in San Marcos....he was there when they built 3 flood control dams above San Marcos courtesy of the Honorable Jake Pickle. Marion would mention Jake about every other sentence.
Ships that pass in the night. LOL Things were more hopeful back then, for sure. I don’t think people realize that there were out and proud liberals, progressives and New Deal Democrats back then. And some of us are still here. Ann Richards and Molly Ivins weren’t sui generis.
Thanks for the memories!
Brought tears to my eyes just reading about it.
Inequality of wealth in the U.S. now exceeds levels that led to the Great Depression. The best selling book "1929" is warning for today about how greed, incompetence and corruption can devastate an economy. Right now the government should be strengthening social safety nets and increasing financial guard rails, but it's doing the exact opposite.
Weeeee 🎡
As Walt Kelly said via Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." If we have no compassion for our neighbors in need then that statement describes reality. Rich S, Octogenarian and Contrarian
I like the way you stand up for your beliefs.
I wish you were on the ballot. Your compassion, sincerity, and ability to articulate the problems and real solutions without the political bs is exactly what we need in our government. Until then, thank you for keeping us informed and inspired with your writings.
💙 Thank you for reading.
Reading this made me sad. Sad that atheists sometimes can be more Christian than Christians. Christians (including Popes, Bishops and Priest) should be speaking on all platforms that we should not want this for Our Country!
As a Home Economics teacher I did see my students hungry. Since some of my classes were cooking classes they had a chance to eat in class once or twice a semester. And from my own lunch. ☺️ Since I’m not there; I pray whoever is can afford to feed them snacks.
all the women i ever knew on the lone star card were single mom's ..........
once picked up a girl at a bus stop...heavily pregnant....dusk.....she was waiting for a bus...i gingerly approached and asked if she needed help. she was getting off her shift at the Steak and Shake on Overton Ridge...she was big fat prego...her boss didn't offer her a ride home, her co-workers didn't offer her a ride home........
long story short i took her to get her meds, took her grocery shopping, went to the ATM and got here some money
when we arrived at her place do u know what she said?
"No one has ever helped me before."
That's who MAGA wants to starve or feed em covid or deny maternal care too.
----
i spent some time this weekend with and old friend, she had 2 degrees, a professional career, adopted kids, was a close friend of mine and my family.
She is die hard MAGA.......i can't for the life of me figure out why. her husband is a real jerk. maybe she folded to accommodate him..maybe living in arkansas all these years.....but i can't figure out why a perfectly compassionate person could worship the rapist felon and now out and out criminal rip off artist killing people in the gulf of mexico
no relenting gang...even if a few R shows a pulse, the vast majority still want to see u and i swing from the gallows