Logistics and Human Suffering in Haiti

I live where there may well be a Mega Thrust (above 9.0 on the Richter Scale) earthquake. There is ONE airport here that can take large aircraft and it is built on landfill out into the delta waters. This is where the geologists know “liquifaction” will happen to the earth, so that airport may well be inoperable after such a huge earthquake, so I really do understand how badly things can turn very quickly.

The entire area is connected by bridges that have NOT been retrofitted to withstand this magnitude of disaster, so those bridges will collapse.

This will cut off almost all possibility of getting emergency supplies anywhere but the main area.

There is one minor airport outside the area, but it is situated well beyond the limits of the major metropolitan area and bridges MUST be crossed to get from there to the cities along the delta.

Now to Haiti. The airport there IS on land, not built on landfill, so it is operable. Yes, there is but one runway, and the aid is forced to get through a bottleneck, but at least they can get it to the island!

Decisions are tough at any time, but when competing demands are ALL urgent, some decisions become life or death, and the price is high no matter which way the decision is made.

Imagine trying to decide whether to cut a limb off and know the chance of living is better if you do, but also try to imagine that cutting off that limb would require surgery, which may not come! Nasty choices but those choices are done minute by minute in Haiti. Most people would freeze, not sure which way to turn, wanting to have some kind of guarantee of the outcome, but in this type of situation, there are NO GUARANTEES!

I understand the need that people have to survive, and yes, if it came down to it, I would be looting too. Food or items CAN be replaced, lives cannot.

When it comes to getting people out, it becomes a reverse flow to the airport, unless there are sea craft that can get to those same people and load them onto ships, boats, or any carriers. So what choices do people make? Do I move those orphans out before I move injured? Who gets priority? If I choose to move the injured out, they may live, but the orphans may die, and if I move the orphans, then those who are injured may die; either way someone will lose.

If it comes to my own life and decisions like this, I know I would grieve for every decision that cost someone pain or death. But, brutal as it is, those decisions must be made, inaction is NOT the answer.

The lessons I have learned from this are going to be applied to my own preparations here. I KNOW there will be no possibility of help, probably for at least 10 days. I am far more fortunate than those in Haiti because I do have the forewarning, the knowledge, the lessons, and I can prepare as best as possible for disaster here.

All I can do is to give what support I can, understand the suffering and do as much as possible to help, even from a very long distance.

Modern Slavery in Canada Still Exists

With all the economic news I did some research into the existing poverty levels in Canada, and found a very disturbing series of facts.

Did you know that if you are on welfare (assistance in some provinces) and you get some temporary work, you do not keep a dime of the money, and to add insult, any costs regarding transportation is up to you?

So, for example, a person works for 2 weeks part-time and gets a cheque for $350, that money is taken off the next cheque, all of it. Basically you end up working for nothing at all. Some incentive that is! If you finally find a place to live, and there is a deposit required, that money is demanded back from your welfare cheque too!

If you used the bus to get there, which costs $5 per day, you end up in the hole for $50! Yeah, good incentive to get a job, NOT!

If you are a single parent, you must also cover part of the costs of daycare, so that comes out of your income too. Going further into a financial hole to get some kind of work experience.

If you do have kids or even one child, any support money the other parent pays goes to the government, not the child, which means the children are paying for being poor again! If the child needs to join in any school activities or trips with the rest of the daycare children, they are out of luck because the government will take any funds away again.

The various provinces all will take any tax refunds, child or alimony support payments, and wages from those living in poverty, making the people who do work basically slaves! This is in one of the very richest countries in the world. Sad, ugly, and yes, disturbing. What is even more astounding is that birthday gifts of money or goods is also repayable, so if a parent gets some money to buy anything for the children, that money is required to be reported, then is deducted from the next month income.  What happens here is that the children are penalized twice, once from living on basically less than families got 10 years ago and having any support from a parent never seen, gone, with no benefit to the children at all.

In the US there are several states that force welfare recipients to work, but they get little or none of the money they earn. Food stamps amount to around $3 per day to feed an adult. What on earth do people expect the poor to eat on that? So, there are basically some American people working as slaves for their governments too!

There are provinces in Canada that have the most millionaires, yet those are the ones that have HUGE numbers of people living in poverty, and those same provinces are the ones with the HIGHEST number of children living in poverty. Keeping people in what amounts to socialized slavery is probably the best hidden secret in North America.

Bashing the poor, especially children who do have responsible parents who support the children as best as possible, is making a very harsh example for those children. After all, the message is that Mom or Dad going to work is going to put less food on the table, make things much harder, and the value of the work is nothing, worthless, because there is NOT ONE DIME more for anything.

This is deliberate, make no mistake. Some states and provinces scream out “welfare fraud!” when the statistics on any fraud is less than 2% of all people getting support, yet those same statistics are used to make these very harsh policies. Talk about damning all because of a very very few!

There are seniors living in cars, families living in tents or car wrecks, all looking to find somethings just decent, yet the states or provinces make it virtually impossible to get one single dime ahead. Some provinces insist that people who have nothing  go looking for work for a minimum of 6 weeks and show they did go around looking for work before they are even allowed to apply for support! Question here. How on earth do you go out looking for work when you don’t have a dime, have no address, have no phone number that prospective employers could call, and have no clothes to go out for an interview?

Actually, in some provinces, that 6 week rule applies to anyone looking for any support. Which means that single moms who are trying to leave an abusive situation must leave their children somewhere to go out to look, which basically can force them to leave those children with the abusive person. Lovely, friggin’ lovely.

As long as the work people do is deemed worthless, and the support for children is seized by governments, and any chance of getting ahead are thwarted, there will be more problems for all of us.

Look at this from a child’s point of view. They need new shoes, sorry, no. They are invited to go out with the daycare, sorry, no. They want to have a Christmas gift for Mom, sorry, no. The child need a new coat and boots, sorry, no. Any possibility of going to the local zoo, swimming pool, movies, or any other outing is gone. Their lives become so narrowed, so lacking in any enjoyment, it become pretty bleak.

This research made me wonder, about those who make these policies, about our society which demeans and belittles these people, and about our own idea of society at all.

The provinces with the worst support are, ironically, those with the most millionaires in them, Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario. The rates for welfare in those provinces have actually gone down in the last ten years, making the support cheques worth less than those issued 10 years ago.

The golden rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or  “Do NOT do to others what you DON’T want done to you”

Guess some people forgot, or maybe we all JUST DO NOT GIVE A DAMN!

Tax Money, Whose Is It?

Town council, city council, state, province, federal, even tax for schools and roads, all depend on someone having to pay up. Lately I have noticed a laissez-faire attitude toward the spending, the use of those tax dollars, as if the supply will always be endless and plentiful. Bad attitude!

Whose dollars are those? Whose pounds, yens, pesos, are those? Often they come from the pockets of the poor, the fastest growing segment of most societies. This means children are often eating poorly, going without new shoes, clothing, so the taxes can be paid. Those taxes are coming from families with single parents working part-time, paying for daycare, rent and all those other daily expenses. Tax dollars come from the people who work in minimum-wage stores with no health plan. Tax dollars come from the small shops who make or sell things. Tax dollars come from welfare payments, retirement income, the small trust funds of children who have lost a grandparent. Tax dollars are seldom gained from those who live in the high-income brackets, because there are write-offs, tax deductions for stock losses, and other means to avoid paying taxes. For every 100 tax dollars, less than half of 1 % is from those who make the most.

Poverty bashing has been a growing game, with those who are forced to live on food stamps, unemployment payments, and welfare the people targeted for derision, scorn.  “Get a job!” “Come on, get off your butt and get out there, earn your own way!” “Stand on your own two feet, I am tired of you sitting there and collecting money, tax money, from my hard earnings!” Take a look at almost every industrialized country statistics and you will find a very ugly trend. Poverty is growing. One in ten children now live in poverty in countries that have huge wealth, why? Wages for single parents are usually low, college, university, even health care courses are all well out of the range for any children of single parents. Costs have risen consistently at all those higher education sites, putting the squeeze on money. How could any of those children even consider getting out of the poverty black hole? Food banks are a common sight now, when once, food banks were only seen in cities with huge populations.

This is where Barack Obama had it right, START AT THE BOTTOM! The real bottom. The middle class has virtually disappeared because of the huge gap between those earning the high wages and income and the lower. The middle class is quickly becoming part of the poverty class, the lowest rung on the ladder.

When the 3 auto makers showed up in Washington, for example, there was a severe public relations gaff they made. People were aghast that those CEO’s showed up via private jets to ask for the tax money. Hmm not a good plan, guys! This showed a complete lack of understanding and even comprehension about tax funds, where the money comes from.

This current shakeup is, in a way, ironic. Those who “invested” in CDS, who played funny-money with others hard-earned money, have lost a huge chunk of their own income from the stock market collapse, the losses in the real-estate speculations, the property bought as “investment” for rental. So, no longer are those people walking around looking like they “own” the world. But, those people are the very ones who distained the ordinary working person, the money and taxes from the growing poverty class, and spent like a lottery winner. CRUNCH!  Now maybe some people will realize that every person who is going hungry, who lives in misery, is directly connected to all of us, and in ways we don’t see, we are the ones who are hungry and miserable too.

The bottom line here is respect. We need to relearn respect for ourselves, to do what we know as well as we can. We need to have those who want to have our tax money learn to respect the work required.  Maybe, just maybe, we can then learn to respect those who live with the hardest struggles, those who have been scorned and derided, the Vietnam veteran, the father, the mom, the sister, the son or daughter who live on the cold streets.  Yes, they deserve respect too.

Most of all, we all need to respect our own lives, to realize that we do all have unique abilities, skills, and underneath, we all are sacred, no matter what religion or belief system we use. We also have to respect our world, making sure that we don’t create such a mess that animals starve or get sick and die from poisons we add to the world.

Every being alive looks for a better future, wants to create a better world, and every one of us is capable of doing that. What the definition of “better” is, is where we have to put respect, honour and care into choosing what we do.

Child and Family Poverty Growing in Canada

Little Change For 20 Years in Poverty Rates

Welsh Children and Families living in poverty

National Center on Child Poverty, Letting Poverty Remain Costs All Of Us

State by State Cost Of Child Poverty in the U.S.

As long as we all believe that we MUST be compared to others, we all lose perspective. Poverty WILL grow now, with job losses, houses foreclosed, debts rising, and support systems being slashed.