Under a
proposal from State Sen. Bruce
Casswell of Michigan, foster children would be forced to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores. Tidy way to save the Duchy of Michigan a little coin and keep the down-trodden down by marking them as wards of the state with second-hand clothes.
I have nothing against St. Vinnie's, Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or any resale stores, particularly those doing charity work. In fact, I shop there myself quite often. I have a familial urge to paw through other folks' throw-aways, for one thing, and I have a cheap streak that needs feeding now and again.
But I CHOOSE to. The kids affected by this scumbag's proposal already had most of their choices taken away from them when they left their families and entered the social service system. They have already been victimized at home, most likely, and were put in foster care to protect them from the chaos.
For the state to then use the excuse of saving money to further demean and victimize them is
un-American, as is Bruce Casswell for proposing it.
When I first read the
article, I was struck speechless by Casswell's lame, whiney response:
“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”
Nobody knows where you bought your clothes . . . except you, Bruce. You knew, and I bet it bothered the HELL out of you.
You're not alone, man. There are a lot of
un-Americans who are just as cheap and mean-spirited as you are:
Trying to kill Medicare, MedicAid and Social Security while insisting on giving further tax cuts to people who don't need them and should in fact be paying more is
un-American, along with those who promote it. Trumping up government deficits and using them as a flimsy excuse to bust public employee unions is
un-American. Yes, Scott; that's you. Firing duly elected public officials and replacing them with a corporate manager under fascist "financial martial law" is
un-American and makes Rick Snyder
uber-un-American. Providing subsidies and tax breaks for corporations to off-shore jobs and profits is
un-American, as are the corporations taking the money and holding their collective hand out for more. To interpret the law in such a way as to allow these same
un-American corporations to contribute limitless dollars to politicians, literally buying elections and killing any opposition to this assault on democracy, is
un-American.And finally, for creating a deafening din of outright lies, half-truths, and innuendo so loud that any real dialog about this attack on U.S. democracy, or about what can be done to fix the economy and the political system, has become impossible: Fox News Network, all of their self-serving contributors, every paleoconservative talk show host and newspaper columnist from the top to the bottom of the food chain, and everyone who listens to or reads them without questioning, are undeniably
un-American.Dice
Comfort is the enemy of growth
