election guff
Jun. 25th, 2004 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7You know, in all this bullshit, I have just one thing to say.
I'm young.
I'm unemployed.
I'm uninsured.
And my sister has to go back to Iraq.
Why won't someone talk about the issues I actually care about?
And PASS A FUCKING BUDGET, you Albany-sucking lameasses. What do we fucking pay you for? Jesus, there are important things going on and real life keeps happening and all you can do is whinge? For TWENTY YEARS? Give me a fucking break.
I vote we dissolve the state government and run NY as an anarchy. You know, more would probably actually get done.
That is all.
Sorry, my pent-up frustration and cynicism just sort of exploded in a weary, goo-filled mess. Motherfucking politicians.
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Rant Understood
Date: 2004-06-26 02:38 am (UTC)What the fuck is with this country where we do not care about the health of the citizenry? If I go off meds I CAN NOT work so I have to work to stay well? And If you get laid off and lose your insurance and get sick and then can't get a job? Government is just another word for Mongolian Cluster-Fuck (pardon that rant)
So I'll lend you my shoulder if you'll lend me yours.
B. Iris
Re: Rant Understood
Date: 2004-06-26 05:05 pm (UTC)I feel for you. I have a friend who has a condition requiring medication. Her health insurance bills are crushing her family, but there's nothing she can do about it until she graduates and hopefully, finally gets a job that'll cover her.
I have spent two of the last three years uninsured.
I am 24 and have no long-term medical conditions. I have minor problems, skin problems for the most part, but on the whole I am seldom in need of a doctor's care. It annoys me not to have the option sometimes, like at the moment because all the skin on my shins is in revolt, but I'll live. I have good teeth and I got in a stock of contact lenses before I lost coverage for them, so...
I have had to go to the emergency room once while uninsured. It was nerve-wracking. I had tonsilitis and couldn't eat. I waited three days, hoping it would subside. It did not. Finally, I could no longer speak, and couldn't breathe unless I was sitting upright. So I finally sought medical help.
Thankfully, I was able to communicate that I did not have insurance, and they had a 'charity care' program. When my boyfriend was treated for the same illness, the treatment cost his insurance company about $1000. When they treated me, it cost $200, even though my case was more severe and required X-rays to be sure I didn't have abcesses...
It makes you wonder, but then you decide not to.
At the moment, I am doing well by not spending any money except on food. I have more money in the bank than I did while working.
But I keep having little flashes of horror, since I have a vivid imagination-- while walking down the stairs, while riding in a car, while walking beside a busy street-- if I fall, if there's an accident, if a driver loses control, and I am horribly maimed, I have no health insurance.
It doesn't help that I just read a News of the Weird item about a young woman who had no insurance and was in an accident. The doctors removed half of her skull to save her life, even though she couldn't pay for it, because they must treat emergency cases. However. Reattaching it wasn't an emergency, so they delayed it unnecessarily for something like six months while they quarrelled over how to do it cheap. And this poor young woman spent all that time wearing a plastic helmet with her brain sloshing around in it, wondering if they were ever going to reattach her skull.
Jesus fucking Christ. Yes, I'm young and I'm healthy, but the world is full of terrible things. Ugh.
I'm about to finally take a job, but I don't want to take an office job. I want to do something that will give me a little more freedom, and possibly not drain my soul, and possibly leave me with some creative energy so I don't spend another eleven months wishing I were dead, like the last time I worked 9-5. But the job I'm going to take doesn't offer health insurance.
So i guess I get to keep freaking out over runaway buses and banana peels, and having vivid visions of tripping and cracking my face against a banister and spitting out all of my teeth and spending the rest of my life looking like an extra from Dukes of Hazzard. Mmm, plastic helmet brainsloshies.
Government is a pain in the ass. They've long since forgotten what their original purpose was. There's no accountability. There's only photo ops. I have a fond desire to meet my local senator Joe Bruno and punch him in the face. Joe, we don't need another stadium named for you. (They not only named it the Sen. Joseph Bruno Stadium, they also dictated that for short, it was to be called "the Joe". Talk about presumptuous. And all Joe did for it was to collect the taxpayer money to fund it.) We need our teachers to be paid. We need some justification for having the highest taxes in the country. Take your pork barrel and shove it, and pass a god damned budget. If anyone on your staff did as shitty a job as you do, they'd be fired and probably sued on top of it.
Bastards.
this is from kat
Date: 2004-07-01 04:53 am (UTC)This is how cynical the editors have gotten at the Gazette. Our editor told us, about three weeks before they left for summer break without a budget, "Please start thinking about budget follow-up stories for the upcoming summer break. We want to highlight projects that must be delayed because the funding hasn't been approved, projects that must be cancelled, and any groups still lobbying for their line item."
This was THREE WEEKS before they left without a budget.
Needless to say, we were all prepared with a nice no-budget packet of stories for the day they left without a budget.
also from kat
Date: 2004-07-01 04:56 am (UTC)