I am sure that I have written about some aspects of this previously, but I am way to lazy to go dig through 1000 plus posts to find it.

Education is supposed to be the great leveler in this country. Supposed to be. But we throw so many roadblocks in for poor students that even if they start a college education, finishing is a problem.

First, there is the atrocious way that poor kids are not prepared for college. When I went back to college I had to start with pre college level math. I’d taken the hard math in high school, all the college prep classes. But it had been so long that I had forgotten almost everything. To get myself up to college level required 2 quarters of remedial algebra. Each of those classes cost a little over $300, plus books (another $150) and a graphing calculator ($75). So I spent nearly $1000 of my paltry financial aid money on classes that won’t count towards my degree but must be taken.

Now I’m an older student. It had been a while for me. But what was shocking was the number of just out of high school kids who were in my classes. This is a community college in an urban area. Nearly every student in the school is poor enough to qualify for financial aid. And a enough of them need remedial math that there are dozens of class options for it (there are 34 options for remedial math in the college catalogue right now and only one option for Math 102, the first college level course offered).

And then there is Welfare reform. Before Welfare reform, back in the 80’s, my mom and dad split up and then she got laid off from her job as a cocktail waitress at a casino in Lake Tahoe because of a bomb. Someone blew up parts of Harvey’s. She eventually went on welfare and between her monthly grant and financial aid she was able to go back to school and support two kids. She didn’t get child support. She eventually got her degree in natural science and then turned her work study experience in the college budget department into a career as a comptroller for government funded non-profits.

But she got to stay on welfare the entire time she was earning her academic degree. We weren’t rich by any means. But we were safe and reasonably comfortable for that level of poverty.

Welfare reform changed that. Now the only way that you can get welfare and go to school is if you are in am approved vocational program. I could get welfare money to become a nurse’s aid, but not a nurse, for example, as long as I cannot receive an actual degree from the program. Lemme say that again. You cannot get welfare in a degree program. You can get it for a certificate program. So I could go to school to get certified in a job that would pay me less than half of what I can make as an unschooled secretary. Or I could be a baker. Or a dental hygienist. Or a hair dresser. The one thing all these jobs have in common is a lifetime of low pay and few advancement opportunities.

Now, if you are a poor student who wants to get a real college education, you must rely on financial aid and loans. My school stopped offering loans about 10 years ago because it wasn’t actually doing much for the students besides putting them in debt. So financial aid was all I had to live on, plus the meager earnings from my job (at the school, not work study, whole ‘nother post for a whole other time). Most poor students work full time. Not part time. 40 plus hours a week waiting tables or being security guards at night. Plus another 15 or so hours of classtime and 15 or so hours of homework. And as tuition keeps rising, financial aid does not keep up. My first year I got enough in financial aid to pay for books, tuition, and my rent for the 3 months of the quarter. My last quarter there I could afford tuition only. The financial aid amount hadn’t changed, but tuition had risen so steeply that there was nothing left, not even for books.

So we start poor college students out with a need to take extra classes to catch up, plus the cost of those classes, then hit them with rising tuition, and require them to maintain grueling work/school schedules. When something stresses the system (say a job scheduling conflict) these students who are so close to the poverty edge already have to choose their jobs over their education. It seems ridiculous to worry about sacrificing an education in order to keep a minimum wage job, but that is what they have to do to survive right now. And it always comes with promises to themselves that they will go back when they can. The financial aid counselor told that it takes an average of 4 years for their students to complete a 2 year degree, what with all the remedial classes plus the stopping and starting. Shit, I’ve got one quarter left (and no further financial aid money till I transfer to a university) and I’m at the 4 year mark.

And there are lots of students like me. So close to transferring, but no money to finish. And that’s at community college tuition rates. Cheap as far as education goes, but out of reach for the very students they are supposed to educate.

All right my darlings, I have reached the end of my tolerance for the discourse level of this election. So here is a cheat sheet so you can tell if the candidates, pundits, news bunnies, blogging heads, and commentors are being of service to democracy or if they are just a bunch of whiny high school brats.

These are things that are actually important to our country: The economy, health care, education, taxes, deficits, the war, national security, privacy, bodily autonomy, separation of church and state, global warming, oil, diplomacy, China, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, subprime mortgages, banking bailouts, corruption, military contractors, global food shortages, inflation, poverty, lax food and drug safety, the supreme court, telecom immunity, the Patriot act, HIV/AIDS, sex education, rising college costs, etc.

These are not important to our country: McCain’s height, Obama’s ears, Palin’s tits (or ass or uterus), the candidate’s children, the wearing or not wearing of flag pins, pantsuits, tie color, hand placement during the national anthem, the child rearing habits of the candidates, the beauty regimes of the candidates, which candidate gives which pundit a hard-on (Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews included)

These are just quick cheat sheets. Not meant to be comprehensive in any way, but just enough so you can tell if someone is acting in the best interest of our country and furthering democracy or if they are just hanging around spreading tawdry bits of crap like a cliquish teenagers.

Now my little chickadees- this is a legitimate reason to be pissed at Palin.

See- this is actually relevant. Can you really be pro-life and pro-family if you refuse to support programs that help poor, young mothers take care of themselves and their babies?

See, if you want to be pro-life you kinda have to be concerned about the families after the babies are born too.

Or you can be pro-choice and care about women, men, babies, children and teenagers all at once. Without being a fucking hypocrite.

I choose the second option.

I saw a thing on PBS last night about Socrates and how he used to go up to random people on the street and ask them questions. I like that idea. I think a big part of the differences between people lie in the way we define things. So I am starting a little Socratic round of questioning today.

What

I know, it’s election season. It’s all anyone wants to talk about. But I am bored to tears talking and fighting over politicians who could give a flying fuck about the people they are supposed to represent. So i am writing about something that is a bit more immediate.

You might be under the impression that we live in a first world country. For a lot of people, that is true. For others, the crushing poverty of less “developed” nations are daily realities. You may even intellectually understand that poverty exists in this country. But knowing a thing and understanding a thing are very different things.

The first thing you should understand about poverty is that being poor means you will be investigated. Your bank records, medical records, employment records, etc. all become open to the government. You sign away any rights to privacy when you ask for help. And you will continue to be investigated, as long as you get a single dollar in assistance. You will fill out the same forms with the same questions for various agencies, all of which will have a rules sheet telling you how you will be a criminal if you misrepresent yourself and exactly how many days you have to submit new forms for every tiny change in your life. Did you get a 10 cent raise at your job? Did a boyfriend move into your home? Did someone buy you a gift or give cash? The strict rules put in place make it nearly impossible to live as a poor person without becoming a criminal of some sort. That $100 some family member might have given you for phone bill better be reported so they can appropriately doc your food stamp allotment for the next month. $100 to keep the phone on means an extra week without groceries, if you follow the rules.

And you never fill these forms out just once. You fill them out over and over and over and over. You bring proof of income. 2 months worth of pay stubs, 6 months, bank statements, letters from those family members stating that the $100 was actually a loan and not a gift so you don’t lose your food stamps. They check with your job. Regularly. It is difficult to have the Welfare office constantly bothering your boss about how many hours you work each week, and then having the Housing Authority do the same. Can you imagine your boss being bothered by a Welfare caseworker every time your hours change? There is more than a little bit of fear that even though your boss knows that you make poverty level wages, that they will be miffed by the constant harassment of those agencies that are supposed to fill in the gaps left by your tiny paycheck.

It is not unlike living in a totalitarian state.

Just a few of the things that I have to fill out the same information for are: Welfare/Tanf, Food Stamps, Medicaid, Housing, Utility Assistance, Childcare, Free Lunches for the Kid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Different agencies (or different departments in the same agency) all getting pretty much the same info. And with the exception of the tax credit, I have to fill these things out a minimum of 4 times per year for each service.

If I were rich, I could also apply for help from the government. It would be called a tax break. I would fill it out once per year at the same time and with the same information that the government already has. But I’m not rich, therefore I must submit to a much more thorough investigation, and I must do it more often.

For a lot of bureaucratic things in this country, we have a pretty decent system down. Standing in line at the DMV is no ones idea of fun, but you can be fairly sure that baring something really atrocious you will get your driver’s license in a timely fashion. Same is true of passports and usually tax returns. But for poor people those things often don’t go as smoothly (Georgia, IIRC, can suspend your license if your insurance cancels you. And insurance companies send copies of their letters of cancellation to the DMV- so you can effectively not own a car and not need insurance and have your license taken away from you). Poor people are much more likely to be audited by the IRS. My mom once explained that little factiod (she was an accountant and took more than a few organizations through auditing) by telling me the IRS just doesn’t believe people can live on that little. And yet nearly 20 million Americans live below the poverty line.

So I may join with you in the chorus of screaming about Telecom immunity and medical records privacy, but the truth is that the government already has all of my medical records. And financial records. And employment history. And so on. In more detail than you think is possible .