From: Susan E. Siens
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 1:12 PM
To: liberties@blockbooks.com
Subject: mistress sarah
I hope you read Cockburn’s and St Clair’s wet dream essay (subscriber edition) about Sarah Palin; I could only hope it was written to annoy their readers. Your piece reminded me, of course, of Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Sarah Palin is the perfect embodiment of repressed sexuality and its intimate connection with violence. Welcome to America!
Susan Elizabeth Siens
Unity, Maine
My husband is very interested in writing in Frank Moore and yourself on his ballot in November. We have to write in candidates with their home city and state included; is this on the website?
Dr. Susan Block wroite:
Thanks for your nice email. And thanks for your vote! I believe that all the information you need to write us in is on Frank Moore’s site: http://www.frankmooreforpresident08.com/
Frank Moore wrote:
hi, suzy and susan. we have not qualitified in maine as write-in candidates as yet because we needed someone there to help us to do the ritual.
For qualification in Maine for write-in candidacy for President, we need 4 registered voters to be electors. 2 of the 4 can be from anywhere in Maine. The 2 others have to be 1 from the 1st Congressional District, and 1 from the 2nd Congressional district. All four of the electors need to fill out a form which contains the name of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate, the elector’s name and address, and must be notarized. In addition, this form also requires that a municipal registrar or clerk certify that the elector is a registered voter. The registrar has to sign and date the form as well.
The deadline is Thursday, October 30, 2008.
susan, would you be up to getting the 3 others and perform this rather strange ritual?
Susan Siens wrote:
Dear Frank,
I would be very willing to do the strange ritual, but let me check out a few things. I am ill (on my way to see Surgeon #3 in a week) and also suffering from serious sports injuries, which makes it hard for me to go anywhere. When you live in the woods and fields as I do, it is limiting when you have to avoid going anywhere! I love your website, and that’s the first flat tax I’ve ever heard of that makes sense.
I’ll be in touch, Susan
Frank Moore wrote:
susan, i understand. get well! but do you know somebody there who would take this on?
Susan Siens wrote:
Dear Frank, My husband might be willing. He’s definitely interested but works two jobs, one at night at a hospital, the other at night caring for people who need round-the-clock nursing care in their homes. Fifty-six and works a minimum of 48 hours per week. I just love America, don’t you? (I actually do, but not the America those blank faces at the Republican convention have brought us.) I’ll ask him; just keep nudging me. Susan
Frank Moore wrote:
nudging gently!
Frank Moore wrote:
this email went out before i was finished! as i was saying…
we are running out of time in maine. realistically we need to get the 4 electors by next week to get the forms in by the deadline. i’ll understand if your husband can’t do it.
you guys sure need the guaranteed minimum income of $1,000 a month per person!
Susan Siens wrote:
Dear Frank,
I sent a message to a couple of artists I know in the 1st District; doing this makes me realize what stuffy people I know in general! One of the problems with living in the boonies. That guaranteed income would be lovely. I started applying for disability 14 months ago — HAHAHAHA! I think the goal is that you will die before receiving it, which my law office told me does happen. Wow, $700 billion for the banksters and they can’t come up with $1200 a month for me. Very interesting country, this. You gotta laugh as much as possible!
We’ll try to do the bit on our end (2nd District) this week. My husband will come off working 7 nights in a row (12 hours, which usually ends up more like 13 or 14) Wednesday morning, he’ll stagger around for a bit, then sleep, then we can go to the town office!
Best, Susan in Unity
Frank Moore wrote:
hey, would you like to be on my e-mail community, the e-salon?
The guaranteed minimum income of $1,000 a month adjusted to the cost of living is meant to be a safety net rather than a replacement for work. I think most want to work…in an expanded concept of work. But to get a true feeling of what it would be like if you had to live on your minimum income, you have to crank in that you wouldn’t pay for health care, education, mass transit, etc. It all adds up. The combined minimum income couple…or a single parent with a child…would be $2,000 a month. This should provide a realistic basic living. This allows the single parent the option of being home doing the important work of raising a child. But free childcare provided by the universal free education system would open a whole host of new possibilities to the single parent.
The minimum income would encourage people to form the cooperative communal family [of all kinds] groupings who pool their incomes together…using their minimum incomes as a base to create more nourishing homes, to start and maintain small businesses. These communal groupings will be much more financially stable, emotionally nourishing, and environmentally friendly than today’s common isolating model of living.
It is all about caring and choice. If a senior wants to stay in her own home, the $1,000 a month will make that possible as will the home attendants provided by the healthcare system. This is also true if she wants to live with her family or in communal housing. This will actually be much cheaper than the scary mess we have now. The warehouse nursing home will be a thing of the past. Seniors will be an important, active element of every part of our society. We need everyone actively involved. We simply cannot afford on any level to warehouse portions of our population. It is a waste of potential!
Some people have expressed concerns that the guaranteed minimum income would drain people’s productivity. They ask why people would work. What they are really asking is why people would work without the whip of fear of hunger and poverty. They never ask this about the rich or the corporations, only about the working class and the poor. In reality most people want to work, want to contribute, want to improve their lives. Hunger, poverty, and fear drain productivity. If we are to survive, we need to end hunger, poverty, and fear.
The guaranteed minimum income will tend to keep wages in general higher and working conditions safer and more worker-friendly. This was also true for welfare and was the true root of the capitalist opposition to welfare.
The guaranteed minimum income will be very different from welfare. Everyone will get it. So there will be no stigma attached to getting it. There will be no red tape, no entrapping rules, no case workers drained of their humanity, and the rest of the demeaning rituals of enforced head-bowing associated with getting public assistance. The guaranteed minimum income will be something you get as a citizen, something you can depend on.
I get S.S.I., Med-cal, and money for a home attendant. People say they don’t mind the truly unfortunates who obviously can’t work getting welfare…but all of those lazy bums getting rich on welfare who could get a job…you know the line of thinking. Well, I am what they are picturing as the truly unfortunate. But in reality I can and do do many things. I can’t get a job, not because of my body, but because I would lose my S.S.I., Medi-Cal, and my money for a home attendant. This is an example of how the system is set up to not work and how the people get blamed for it not working. It is hard and scary living on so-called welfare. This is not true for me….at least not as much. I’m a punk, have built a support network of friends, doctors, etc. When I get a threatening letter [they are always threatening] informing me I must go to this certain doctor within two weeks to get a brain cat-scan [for which I would need to get knocked out] to prove I still have cerebral palsy or lose all my benefits, I with Linda can get on the phone and politely but firmly guide the over-worked case manager to turn the pages of my file to find the last yearly visit to check that a miracle hadn’t occurred. But most people in that position are much more vulnerable than I am. They are on their own, without a support network, etc. I don’t know how they survive. I know Nancy, a college student with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair, needing assistance with feeding, drinking, going to the bathroom, etc. She is determined to live independently. But her S.S.I. check is barely livable small. Her attendant hours [at minimum wage] are less than half of what she really needs. So she has to wait for a drink of water. She wears a catheter although it causes infection [hence will probably shorten her life]. To add insult to injury, there is a threat that her needed supplies will be unclassified as medical equipment and will no longer be funded. Because most doctors and hospitals do not accept Medi-Cal patients [because of red tape, low payment, and insane rules], she has to travel hours to the county hospital to wait more hours to be seen. But she keeps on doing what she has to do in order to stay in the game of life rather than being stuck in an institution…which would cost us much more than keeping her out with us. Out here, we can hear her poetry, see her perform. Most people on public assistance do contribute to society. They raise families, do art and music, push for change, etc.
The truth is the system is designed for failure, for easy scapegoats and decoys. As I am writing this, I see the governor of California is again threatening to cut S.S.I., Medi-Cal, home attendants, etc. Well, the web work of the guaranteed minimum income, a livable wage, the universal health care and the life-long education systems will be designed to work. And because everybody will be covered by this web work, this web work will be much harder to screw up!
I will cut the military budget by at least half and use half of the savings to pay down the national debt. I will shrink the federal bureaucracy and again use half of the savings for this pay down.
Basically the problem is not a lack of money, but what we have spent our money on…war, pork, waste, etc. It has been a standard trick to distract us with supposed waste, fraud, etc. in the social programs while milking us out of billions in military waste, corporate welfare, etc.
Again, the minimum income of $1,000 a month for every citizen will give people money to spend, save, invest, or pool with others to create more effective financial communities which will open up a wide range of opportunities for the average person…to start small businesses, to stay on the family farm, to do art, to raise kids, etc. Free health care [which will include long-term care, home attendants, medicine, etc.], free life time education [including child care], free mass transit, etc. will in effect put more real money in the pocket of the average person. But more importantly the fear of the future will fade, releasing what is now horded away for old age, for when your health fails you, for your kid’s education…releasing the knot in your belly of knowing that no matter how much you manage to save [if any] it will not be enough.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Susan Siens wrote:
Do we need to get Susan the forms for Presidential Elector Consent … wondering if that’s why she would be going to the Town Office? There is a form which includes a place for the elector to sign and have notarized and also includes a section for the local registrar to certify that they are registered voters …
Frank Moore wrote:
i just got the below email from my guys. i didn’t realize that each elector form needs to be notarized. although i’d love to be legit in maine, i don’t want to have your husband and you waste your time and money on an unrealistic process.
Susan Siens wrote:
Dear Frank,
I did get the info on how to get the form, but have not heard from my friend in the 1st District! I’m not sure how often she checks her email. She’s a bead artist and gets a little obsessed. Things are overwhelming here. My husband (Page) has signed on to too many hours, and annoyed me, just at the time of year when we need to get in more wood and all the root vegetables, put bales of hay around the house, grade the horse’s stall so it doesn’t flood in spring, etc, etc, etc. I need abdominal surgery and my back is a total wreck from all the damage I’ve done to it by falling off horses (mostly when I was a kid), so I’m not as strong as I should be.
I read some of your essay about a guaranteed income, which I totally agree with. And I am grateful I don’t have cerebral palsy. My problems can either be solved by docs or kept in check by quality bodywork. But, as the partner of someone who deals with old people a lot (and as someone who has made her partner promise to put her in a nursing home rather than spend his life caring for her), I think people’s perceptions of nursing homes aren’t quite the entire picture. The reality is that my husband takes care of old, demented people who hit him and other staff, scream incessantly, pull out their IVs, demand constant attention, etc. They are like babies, but they are not babies; they are not appealing and they will not grow into cognitive beings. No one, including their families, would want to live with them and take care of them. Of course there are people in nursing homes who are not out of it and would probably do better in a family living environment, doing what they are able (we all want to feel useful, which is why emotionally healthy people don’t want to spend their lives watching TV), but there are also a lot of people whom I feel are best cared for by people who work in shifts! An example is my deceased father-in-law who actually moved in with his ex-wife and her boyfriend (!!!!!), verbally abused his ex but satisifed the emotionally dysfunctional needs of my social worker sister-in-law to see her parents get back together (sick, sick, sick). My sister-in-law became his boss (inappropriate, in my opinion) and he died hating her; we both thought he should have gone to the VA nursing home because he would not take any responsibility for himself. These issues remind me of dealing with people with serious mental health problems; I don’t think warehousing and drugging people is any solution, but we need safe, quiet, protected places for some people with caretakers who get decently educated and paid, and get breaks.
Tell me what you think, and please put me on your email list. And I’ll give up on the elector process if it’s okay, even though you have the best program of any candidate I am aware of. I heard the Libertarian guy, Nader, and McKinney on the radio giving their response to the Bags o’ Money for the Banksters, and McKinney gave the best, clearest response. The Greens here annoy me no end (the apolitical party, Page calls them), but I’ll probably vote for McKinney.
You have all my sympathy in dealing with SSI, Medi-Cal, etc. I am lucky to have Page, or I would be homeless and helpless with a skinny horse, two skinny dogs, and two skinny cats!
Best, Susan
Frank Moore wrote:
yep, McKinney would be my second choice also. and, yep, i keep telling the greens here they need to be much sexier!
i like my body. it is my normal state which i have been functioning quite well in for my entire life. it is much harder for people to adapt to physical changes in mid-life.
one of the people i live with is the director of enrichment at a large retirement community. people with dementia are erika’s favorite people to work with. she is extremely successful in getting into their reality to relate with them in a deep, playful, fun place. the residents are happier and live longer as a result. sounds like page doesn’t work in an environment where this is easily possible. he works in an environment of over-worked, under-paid, and under-respected. unfortunately the place erika works was just bought by a big for-profit corporation who are kicking out her favorite people, turning the place into a fancy hotel for rich 60-year-olds! she is looking for another job with favorite people!
