Douglas Rothschild writes about the Juggalo Ethos and how it’s our future. This touches on some of my greatest fears with regard to inequality and what it will mean for our culture.
Deer-crossing and children-at-play signs don’t work. Sensible state that it is, Minnesota is getting rid of them.
According to the Atlanta Fed President, we have too much job stability.
Shockingly, receiving oral sex on an airplane will hurt your reputation.
Reservations contain almost a third of coal reserves west of the Mississippi, and some tribespeople are not pleased about the War on Coal. Government policy aside, the gas boom is taking its toll on Coal Country.
Esquire talks about our political center.
“The government overreach implicated in banning a harmless product because its testing regimen isn’t good enough to distinguish yogurt from mind-altering substances is apparently lost on the people who make decisions about such things.”
The Chinese like the American optimism of 2 Broke Girls think the French lazy are lazy. Some of the French are actually anxious to maybe work more.
The Denver Post on solar and wind. I will remain skeptical of such things until they actually start to compete with other energy sources on a similar level of subsidy, but I do remain hopeful.
The return of the flophouse!
Are our public universities going private?
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Ugh. The author of the Forbes article about the Atlanta Fed President’s call for more labor churn uses this issue to push for more immigration. I just can’t see how more competition for the limited jobs available to young workers (statistics cited in the article) will help them to move up the career ladder and pay scale. Isn’t it just as likely that many of the young American workers will simply be displaced by the foreign competition, throw off the career ladder completely?
I hear what you’re saying. I found the pro-immigration aspect of it less interesting than the express desire for churn.
“And perhaps no group better exemplifies in the popular mind a rootless, work-shy, amoral underclass than the Juggalos…”
The problem is that they reproduce early and often, supported by welfare, at least the ones I’ve met. Of course, the ones I’ve met are through my job, which means that by necessity that they’re parents. Isn’t that awful though? We don’t think of young people in these trashy subcultures being *parents,* because that’s never how it is on TV.
The distinction between juggalos and other ICP fans is actually kind of interesting. I know a number of people who like ICP. But none of us take it seriously. It’s scary that some people do. Scarier that they reproduce in large-ish numbers.
(That said, I took the article to be about juggalos in a more abstract sense. It’s… not really all that pleasant to think about.)
When I saw the Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial on YouTube, I finally understood that SNL “UNDERGROUND UNDERGROUND” sketch.
“Flophouse,” aka affordable housing. It’s the biggest issue for so many of my clients in getting their kids back — they can’t afford private housing. They have to have roommates, and the roommates have to be approved by children’s services, which includes a criminal background check, and guess what, most roommates won’t pass.
So in your estimation, would increasing the availability of single-room occupancy residences help reunite mothers or parents with their children?
Which leads to the question of “what family court would allow a woman (or man) with children to live in such a small dwelling?”
David, it’s OK if it’s small. It’s just got to be clean and private. The biggest problem for poor people is the other poor people. But, yeah, the ones with seven or eight kids would meet more resistance than the ones with two or three. Sometimes they visit in shifts — some kids some nights, others on other nights.
Yes. Definitely. See, what happens is, they lose their benefits when their kids get taken. Most have cash aid and food stamps, but not Section 8 housing subsidies, but whatever they have they lose it all without the kids. There’s no way they can pay rent on their own apartment without public assistance. Even if they were qualified for a job that paid enough for housing, which is almost never, they usually need to do things like drug rehab which are not very compatible with full-time employment.
Let’s say they do everything they need to do — rehab, domestic violence counseling, parenting class (typical package). Getting their kids back goes in stages, and it’s at least three months before they’re considered ready for overnight visits –that’s usually the step before the kids come home to live, which will turn the benefits back on. Where will they have those transitional visits? Can’t be at their new boyfriend’s house — he’s always got a rap sheet as long as your arm. There are sober living homes, but the child welfare workers usually don’t want the kids visiting there because of the other residents, so it takes a tough judge to override them.
Fortunately, more often than not, they have relatives who will take them in while they transition. The ones who don’t — or who don’t have relatives deemed acceptable — have a really tough time.
When they do make it, instead of backsliding to a bad boyfriend or druggy friends, they use motels to bridge the gap. But motels with weekly rates are more expensive than you might think, even in the sticks where I live. I put Fish up in one for a couple weeks, and it was $288 per week (higher for daily) and would have been more like $350/week in the summer.
It’s relevant to know that in LA County, General Relief, the only aid program available to childless adults except SSI, pays slightly less than $200 a month and one can only be on it for nine months out of the year. Sometimes its recipients also get food stamps and sometimes they don’t — I haven’t figured out the reasoning behind that yet. So that’s the budget for a non-SSI parent trying to reunify with his or her children. The dads sometimes seem to get vaguely detailed day labor, but the women are usually completely dependent on public aid. That, or sometimes they seem to get these “home health care aide” jobs for elderly people that pay minimum wage. Those rarely seem to last long, not sure why.
That, or sometimes they seem to get these “home health care aide” jobs for elderly people that pay minimum wage. Those rarely seem to last long, not sure why.
I suspect it’s because in California, home healthcare aides are used a bit more judiciously*. In contrast, in New York, there are legions of people in that job, some going from house to house for a few hours providing follow up care for patients, while others end up serving as live-in aides doing nearly everything for the person. My mother has the former right now because she’s in post-surgery stages of recovery, while the latter is what my grandmother has, and it’s fully covered by Medicaid. Such arrangements in her case aren’t too uncommon, and considered to be more ideal and sometimes cheaper than a nursing home. Allegedly, New York is the only state that seems to offer such widespread home care services via Medicaid, and the employees don’t make much as the money is skimmed by their “non-profit” contractors that provide the service for the government.
*Plus, I suspect that your clients are the type to wash out due to complaints by the “patients”.
General Relief
FWIW, it’s not much different in New York or New Jersey either, as I’m learning from my older brother. His solution is to live with his girlfriend who is on SSDI, work off the books to supplement his income, and periodically ask me for money when he runs short. He only has a GED, lack of a drivers license, and his criminal background makes him somewhat unemployable…
As I’ve noted, we’ve created perverse incentives where the only way to get social support from the state that amounts to much is to have children out of wedlock.
David, I’ll bet they’re not used any more judiciously. Rather, I suspect my clients sometimes aren’t telling the truth about it. Arrests and complaints may be other interrupting factors. Or, maybe the system itself is flaky and they don’t get paid, I’ve heard complaints about that as well.
BTW, man, I am sorry about your brother. I am surprised he turned out so differently from you. My brother is a bit of a disappointment, too, divorced with no college degree and a spotty work history and obnoxious political stances and flaky friends, but at least has no criminal history and a job managing a roller rink, and is currently not speaking to me. Hey, at least neither of them has had kids (yet).
Wait, David, he doesn’t even have a driver’s license? It must have gotten taken away, right? I mean, you love to drive, and you grew up with a dad, so he wasn’t in the position of many of my unlicensed clients who had no dad to teach them and their parents didn’t have a car for them to take the test.
Wow, criminal background and lack of driver’s license. Maybe the latter is not as big a deal in New York as in California, but out here, it would plant him firmly in the underclass. Your family always seemed so solidly middle-class from everything you’ve ever let drop.
PS, my brother had a girlfriend on SSI for a while, too. But it fell apart acrimoniously.
Juggalo culture always struck me as nerd culture for the left half of the Bell Curve. The same celebration of outsiderness without the respect for knowledge (even if it’s about comic books).
I think the Juggalo culture has some negative dimensions that nerd culture lacks. At least nerds hold economically productive jobs!