Yesterday I pulled in to a gas station.
Finding myself in a legitimately good disposition, (I had been working so hard through final week at school, and had found out I aced a couple of exams!). I got out of my car and walked to the pump and read out loud: “three-seventy-seven”.
An immediate turn for the worse: In my mind I pictured an empty wallet, a zero balance on my bank statement, my car stranded on the highway. Three-seventy-seven!?
I looked around at the dismal crowd pumping gas: A guy next to his Hummer banging his head against the bumper, a poor old lady at the cashier digging at the bottom of her purse for pennies. Expressions of defeat and surrender.
All over the news the anchors say how it is not going to get any better any time soon. There is a News Team at every gas station across the country focusing stage-center: those incredibly astronomical numbers. I sit at home and watch news story after news story, the apologetic expressions on Brian Willam’s face, Katie Couric’s regretful tone. And then the weather comes on and we can think about something else for a minute, but it is always hanging in the back of my mind.
I think of how it is spreading its effect all over. Food prices, air travel, recreation. An inflated taxation barrel hit the middle of a serene lake and its ripples are reaching the shores on all of our doorsteps. It’s an oil spill.
Whether I get political or not, one thing is for sure: Things have to change! Especially for those we dedicate this website: the assisted families, the ones in need of a helping hand out of poverty. How can we expect them to get better paying jobs when the facilitation works against them to even GET to their job? This is the reason why Section 8 was initially created, to address the inflation and rising costs of living.
I know I usually write blogs with the hopes of creating better days, instilling hope in the hearts of those disheartened. I would like to look the other way when I watch the news and tell myself, no , things WILL get better. The US will fight it, we’ll elect someone who will fight for us.
And then, the weather comes on.
May 21, 2008 at 8:56 am |
Dear V.,
Thank you for (almost) containing your political leanings in this (Oil Spill) commentary. As much as I also disapprove of the “Country Club Republican” elite; I must warn you not to get your hopes up based on the promises of any extremist who might happen to share some racial (although no cultural) heritage with most of our clientèle.
Remember that the purpose of public assistance is to help citizens get on their feet, and the premise is that they want to do so. The ultimate extreme of government intervention into the private citizenry is totalitarian Communism, which is why those of us who believe that some government assistance is essential must take care to avoid extremists.
Most landlords believe in capitalism and free enterprise. That’s how they achieved their goal of becoming landlords. “Robin Hood” extremists who see no harm in “taking from the rich to give to the poor” tend to remind landlords of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who nationalized all Real Estate, essentially stealing the property of that country’s landlords and giving it to their tenants. Those of us who paid attention in history class may note that Stalin did the same thing in the Soviet Union.
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that it’s better to reach out to landlords and seek to capitalize on our common ground of providing quality housing to (currently) less fortunate fellow Americans, as opposed to running the risk of alienating those very partners who have cooperated with Public Housing in moving away from the “slumlord” stigma.