it's Friday, the debate's on - let's talk about the poor in our cities.

[ulysses]

(I'm the life of the fucking party, I know. :) )

It's fashionable these days to completely ignore the time bomb on which we're sitting. I'll watch the debate (being recorded here) later to see what's being said about the domestic "thing". I'll expect great rhetoric.

I want to know when we can expect things to happen for our own inner cities. We can approve huge (unspent) sums for reconstruction in Iraq. Why aren't we taking care of our own back yard? Where are the *meaningful* drug rehab/intervention programs? Where are the jobs?

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

1. Where are the prisons.

Uly, you know folks would rather pay for cops and prisons rather than address things upstream.

[ulysses]

2. I know - they're conditioned to it.

So what do we do to affect a sea-change in that attitude?

[SarahB]

3. Paying people who work in social services well.

I recently got a job as a Parent Educator doing home visits in a program voluntary for at-risk parents with children 0-3. I couldn't take the job because with childcare for one child (my others are in school all day), it cut my income in half. I would have been a person who actually cared about my job and done my damnedest, but I couldn't afford to take it. I'm slowly working toward a degree in nursing because I can't afford to take care of myself and my family and stay in early childhood development/education and now trying to find something entry level in the medical field on evening or nights. The job I had to turn down was tied with a major agency and federal program too. It just shows the value this country places on people who genuinely care about and work hands-on to make things better in the lives of children.

Starting human beings on the right foot the first few years of life is the key to solving just about everything in my opinion. It takes years though (a generation) and a society willing to put it as a priority. Imagine what we could do in this society if the trillion or so dollars that go to the Pentagon every year, went into concrete ways to make a difference in the lives of families and children- nutrition, healthcare, childcare, counseling, rehab, job training, and on and on and on.

This country puts this priority at next to nothing. Look at the rest of the world. Many places seem to understand this. It's a shame that young children are such a low priority to America.

[ulysses]

4. yes, well...

It just shows the value this country places on people who genuinely care about and work hands-on to make things better in the lives of children.

Children don't vote, and they certainly don't give large sums of money to any candidates.

I try not to be flip about stuff like this because I know it doesn't help, but it's hard sometimes. You couldn't be more right about the Pentagon budget.

[SarahB]

5. But...

We vote.
Somehow, sometime, things have to get better if those of us who do care and understand slowly keep working toward that goal. I have a little hope anyway.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Well, Uly, that's one reason why I was supporting Kucinich

in the primaries.

He was the only candidate who said that we had to cut the military budget, stop trying to police the world, and take care of business at home.

I'm old enough to remember the War on Poverty. For all his stubbornness on Vietnam, LBJ made us ashamed as a nation about having people go hungry and jobless.

That's what makes me nostalgic about the 1960s, not the sex, drugs, and rock&roll, which my parents never would have let me participate in. :-)

[ulysses]

7. I know.

It bothered me to not support Dennis from the outset. I should have.