Motley Moose – Archive

Today headlines blared that the Boston bombers had been funding their terrorist lifestyles with welfare. How could we, the cash-strapped people, have been allowed to provide for these shady characters? The American-born wife and baby were obviously part of a long con on the generosity of the American people. That the wife chose to work 80 hours a week (possibly for less than minimum wage) as a quasi-servant rather than continue with those benefits does not mitigate the fact that someone who later became a terrorist got to mooch! Who would have the insolence to even wonder whether the indignities of the broken welfare system factored into how much these “losers” came to hate the United States…?

Well, I’m going to dare to bring it up.

The welfare approach in the United States are ridiculously fragmented, inadequate, poorly implemented, and outright broken. Political rhetoric from all sides raises the taxpayer’s awareness that their money pays for an enormous welfare system. Yet when the taxpayer turns to this system during their own time of desperation, they discover unanswered phone calls, months (if not years) of applications and appeals, bureaucratistans that don’t bother to deliver the measly few “services” they meticulously document on your “plan” (the California Department of Rehabilitation, which is supposed to be putting people back to work, is a major offender here), and have abundant means to retaliate (for example, by consigning your case to limbo) if anyone complains.

There is a deliberate rightwing campaign to make stymied taxpayers believe that “someone else” (of a different race, religion, or political affiliation) is getting paid “regular checks from the government”, while anyone who has ever tried to deal with this system knows for sure it’s not them. “Disability checks” are the latest spearhead in the rightwing’s egregiously misinformed attack on welfare.

But while Republicans regular twist and ignore facts to shore up their 47 percent Entitlement Society propaganda, Democrats are failing in the other direction by blindly defending the system without acknowledging the problems or making any attempts to fix them. President Obama’s idea of a bipartisan bridge is cutting Social Security benefits, when many seniors are already struggling to get by on a few hundred dollars a month. There is no way around the fact that the only way to get everyone off welfare is to guarantee full employment.

Last year I wrote a series of posts about my own experience of the welfare fiasco for Daily Kos, but I found this was the wrong venue since too many comments trivialized or even flamed a subject that is a matter of life-and-death to a significant segment of the U.S. population. I looked for another place to repost my series, but I could not find another place where I could convey what I knew about welfare to a broad audience of voters. Finally I just boiled down what I had to say in 10 Ways to Fix Welfare on a free WordPress blog and left my message to float on the ether. As far as I know, no one is reading it or referencing it. It’s vitally important to dispel the fog of ignorance that surrounds welfare. So it’s time to make another attempt to shed light on the real problems with welfare and how to fix them.

I am copying my “10 ways to Fix Welfare” here in the hope that this post will be passed around and spark a larger conversation, with testimony from the people who have actually interacted with the welfare system. My complete article is pasted below, and there is a little more information about me on the WordPress site.

I’m weird.

Not just in the ways many of us here are weird – liberal, progressive, etc.  No.  Not even just because I am an atheist. I was born on July 2, 1959, 7 weeks early, with no sucking reflex and no nails on fingers or toes.  Because I wasn’t that small, though, I was not given special attention in the hospital.  My parents have since told me they considered suing the hospital.  By the time I was 4 or so, it was clear that I was, in my father’s phrase “screwed up somehow, but not stupid”.  I was asked not to return to the same school after kindergarten.  A psychologist told my parents I would never graduate from college.  I did, by the way, graduate at age 20; my parents had a party for me.  I invited the psychologist.  He wrote back saying he was glad he was wrong.

My mother started a school for me, the [Gateway School of New York, because there were no schools for kids like me: I was what was then just beginning to be called learning disabled.  But the diagnoses my parents got were more like `minimal brain damage’ or or ‘minimal brain dysfunction’ or `mentally retarded’.  

My mother was, to put it mildly, a very determined woman.  She found another very determined woman (Elizabeth Freidus – pronounced freed us, and what a great name for a teacher in special ed)!  Elizabeth did everything that had to do with teaching, my mom did everything else.  I have two stories that may have some relevance (or may not  – but they’re good stories) regarding the founding of Gateway: One regards normality and the other regards rights.

Anyone who thinks about it knows that you can be disabled and gifted.  But anyone who’s disabled can tell you that a lot of people don’t think.  Otherwise, why would people talk louder to people in wheelchairs?  Leg bone connected to the ear bone?

But what if your disability is related to …. your BRAIN?  Like mine is.  I’m learning disabled.  Well, TECHNICALLY, my label is MINIMAL BRAIN DYSFUNCTION.  (DYS?  WTF? That’s just to make life harder for the dyslexic folk out there).  But the label that fits me best is probably NLD.  Nonverbal learning disorder.  That is, I have problems with things that are NON verbal.  Well, except, the expert on NLD says I am not supposed to have a sense of humor.  OOPS!  Where do I go to return it?

Anyway, I’m learning disabled.  Or my brain is dysfunctional.  Something’s wrong, and whatever it is is related to my brain.  AND I’M GIFTED.  Gosh!  You mean my brain works too well AND too badly???? At the same time?  Yup.

But a lot of people don’t believe it.  I guess those people think everyone who is fat has to be tall.  (shhhh!  No sense of humor!).

It confuses people.  It sure as heck confused the psychologist who told my parents when I was 5 that I would never go to college.  ‘Cause, you see, I got my BA when I was 20, having skipped a year of HS and done college in 3 years.

Whatever you think of IQ tests (personally, I think they can be useful but are easy to abuse) my results are odd.  Long ago, on a WISC (that’s Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) I got subtest scores from 60 to 160.  More recently, in grad school (hey!  I wasn’t supposed to go to college!  What’s with grad school? Bad boy!)  I helped out a friend who was studying to be able to give the WAIS (ah ha! Wechsler Adult Instelligence Scales.  Shouldn’t it be WISA?)  I got subtest scores from 70 to unscored, because she didn’t know what to do when I answered some arithmetic questions before she finished asking them (well, I just figured the question, then the answer! Doesn’t everyone do that?).

Now, if your whole IQ is 70, you’re probably going to have some problems in life.  And if your whole IQ is 170, you are probably going to have some problems in life.  And if some of your IQ is 70 and some is 170….. well, life is just going to be smooth sailing, all the way!  (Just checking to see if you were paying attention!)

OK, I know a lot of people don’t like IQ tests.  I happen to know quite a bit about them (my PhD is in psychometrics, that’s the study of measurement of psychological traits) but this diary is not about their merits or demerits (and let’s not get into that in the comments…. if you want my thoughts on them, I’d be glad to write another diary).

What do people say when you tell them that you are learning disabled AND good at reading and math?  Different people react different ways:

1) “You can’t be LD, you’re so bright!”     IOW “you can’t be fat, you’re so tall!”

2) “You can’t be LD and gifted”    IOW “No one who is tall can be fat.”

3)  “All LDs involve reading or math” IOW “Children know everything adults do, except how to read and do math”

4) “How can that be?” or “What are your LD?” or something similar.  IOW “Hey! Maybe Peter knows more about being Peter than I do!  I might learn something.  Cool”

I’ll assume that you’ve all done something in the 4 vein.  

What are my LD?  An easy way to summarize them is that I’m bad at anything involving time or space.  But that summary might not help much.  

Things involving time subdivides into two categories:

a) When things happened

b) How long things take to happen

I am bad at both.  Some examples of the first:

As an adolescent, I was hit by a car and I had an operation on my eyes.  I don’t remember when exactly either of them happened.  

As an adult, I got a PhD and  became a father for the first time.  I have to THINK to be able to tell which happened first, it’s not intuitive.  I remember the date of my PhD (1999) and my older son’s birthday (1996) so…. child first!

Some examples of the second:  I have no intuitive sense of how long it takes to do things, unless I’ve done them MANY times before.  Like a dozen times.  And, if I haven’t done it in a while, I forget.  I’ve been from my apartment to LaGuardia airport a lot.  But not for a while.  Err…. half an hour? An hour?

How long will it take me to walk to my son’s school?  I’ve done it a lot.  But I have to figure it out:  It’s about a mile.  That’s about 20 blocks.  I walk about a minute a block, and voila!

On to space!

I don’t remember where I put things.  AT ALL.   I know, a lot of people will say this, but with me, it’s extreme, and it happens a lot.  Like, one day, I came home carrying a cup of juice.  I had to go to the bathroom, so I put the juice down.  Then I peed.  Then I looked for the juice.  For 10 minutes.  Our apartment isn’t that large!

I don’t recognize people.  (I can remember names much better than faces; for example, I remember the names of people I went to HS with, but not their faces).  Once, I ran into my father on the street.  I looked at him.  30 seconds later: Oh Hi Dad!

I can’t give directions.  Turn uhhhhh. left? right?  ummm one of those!

I don’t remember what is where.  One time, I asked my wife if we had a toaster oven.  She said “Yeah, it’s next  to the coffee maker you use every morning”  (I looked, and there it was!).  

So, can you be gifted and learning disabled?  You bet you can.  I am.  

I’ll try to answer questions.