My disdain for the poor.
Admittedly, this is a bit long... but bear with me, read through it...
I admit it. Generally speaking, I can't stand people who call themselves, "poor." I can't stand the victim mentality. I was raised by a single mother & at times, we were very poor... 3rd world poor... no running water poor. Being there, I saw what it took to get into & out of that situation. I have little sympathy for the poor... outside of the mentally ill, physically disabled, or otherwise stricken I simply do not see the excuse.
Then, my good pal Boortz posts this damn article just to piss me off... it's long & I've added my own smartass remarks in there to highlight some of the things that piss me off about it... THIS is the type of person on minimum wage? THIS is the type of person we're supposed to feel sorry for & use as justification to molest the private property rights of business owners? Read on...
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Living on $6 an hour
Brenda Kelly is one of the Lowcountry's working poor. Paychecks never stretch far enough. An increase in the federal minimum wage would help, but that might come too late for the woman raising four children and facing eviction.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
BY JESSICA JOHNSON
ALAN HAWES/STAFF
Brenda Kelly holds her youngest child, 3-year- old James Campbell, before he heads to bed for the night.
First comment. I notice the kid isn't white. I don't really have a problem with that. Heck, had previous relationships worked out, I might have ended up with a mulatto kid, myself. However, I was and am very aware of just what kind of a position that puts a child in withing society... not black, not white... a mulatto girl at work begrudgingly calls herself a niggeronkey. She isn't amused by her lack of "belonging." Whatever... I'm sure Brenda Kelly was very concious of the decision she was making when she decided to bring that little kid into the world & I'm quite sure she's giving him all the guidance he needs to not need to belong. :sarcasm: There are other hints about the "family" in that pic, but I'll leave them alone, for now.
Brenda Kelly leaves for work at 2:30 p.m., quietly saying goodbye to her sister. The youngest of Kelly's six children remains occupied in another room. She shuts the door and heads down Baxter Street.
SIX CHILDREN! Does she NOT KNOW how they're made? Clearly, she's never been a big breadwinner, why on Earth is she continuing to breed?
But it's too late. Her 3-year-old, James Campbell, runs out the door and onto the porch with a scowl on his face, watching his mother go.
"He doesn't like it when I leave him," she said.
Her sister, Jenny Johnson, 36, follows behind and takes James inside In other words, she's getting free childcare as Kelly walks toward Chicora Street to her $6-an-hour job. There's the pay rate she's working at... keep that in mind. She keeps her eyes to the ground, careful to avoid eye contact with strangers, her mind wandering to her children.
James is her baby, transfixed by Power Rangers. John Campbell, 5, is her cranky child, who when upset can take hours to speak again. Ambur Kelly, 10, is her outgoing one, the exact opposite of her mother growing up. And Christopher Kelly is her shy one, who makes statements far wiser than his 9 years. "I can't wait to see what he will be when he grows up," the 38-year-old Kelly said. There's another good hint... her age.
There's also Ernie Crespo, 18, 38 minus 18 is 20. That's when her first was born. Does the article say anything about this MAN's job? If he's 18 & living at home... is he helping out?who is headed into the Navy soon, and his sister, Sybil Crespo, who is 15. Kelly lost custody of them after she took them out of Virginia illegally.Oh, no, they're not living at home because mommy can't obey a judge's order. Hmmm... ever been to a custody hearing? This is only half the story. The judge didn't take the kids away because she took them out of state. This is bullshit. She and their father had ended their eight-year relationship and agreed in court to share custody.
Kelly remained in the Norfolk area for a year before returning with her children to her childhood home in West Ashley. Then Ernesto Crespo filed for full custody and took the children back.
"It was traumatic for me. I love my kids," Kelly said. "It just hurt me to lose custody." In other words, she only has four kids to care for... there goes some of the emotional heartstring pulling power this minimum wage poster child had!
Her efforts to win back custody failed, but she is allowed visitation during school breaks. She and the children's father remain on good terms. Ernesto Crespo said he won custody mainly because Kelly violated the custody agreement by leaving the state.
"She is a great mom," Crespo said. He knows that when his children are with her that they are fed, bathed and clothed, despite her struggles.
"Her dreams just didn't pan out how she expected them to."
With the loss of her children weighing on her, she met Chris Kelly. They had two children, married and separated. In that order?She then had two children with a third man, but she no longer has a relationship with either of the fathers. Knows how to pick 'em, doesn't she?
Kelly pays child support for her two oldest children, but she receives none for her other children, despite being a single mother. Who's fault is that? I'm not 100% sure about the laws Charleston, but in Georgia, failure to pay child support can get you assraped by Uncle Sam. Perhaps she's just too damn lazy to pursue the fathers... more on this theme later.
John Campbell, 35, the father of Kelly's two youngest children, said he tries to help and once paid to recharge Kelly's phone minutes and brought his son medicine. But he also makes $6 an hour and pays $75 a week in child support for another child. Kelly has not sought court-ordered child support from him. There you have it... she picked a real winner for a father, one who was already paying some other dumbass child support & Brenda Kelly HASN'T EVEN ATTEMPTED TO GET THE OWED CHILD SUPPORT!
"I barely make any money myself," Campbell said.
Chris Kelly, the father of Christopher and Ambur, is serving time in prison for robbery and hasn't paid his court-ordered support. Wow... Just wow. The only man this woman managed to get knocked up by took her kids from her in a custody battle & now she pays him child support. The other two studs are either minimum wage losers themselves or are in prison. Dumbass.
So Kelly walks to work to provide for all six of her children. NO SHE DOESN'T. She walks to work to provide for four of her children, pay child support for two of them [an important distinction, imo] & she's working to provide for more than just this... more on that later, too. The path to her $6-an-hour job takes her by fields littered with paper, broken beer bottles and assorted garbage. The chimney smoke rising from Chicora homes smells of burning paper. She pulls her coat closed in the 40-degree weather. Come on, you Yankees... wipe those tears. I know that hearing of some dumb welfare queen shivering in the 40 degree weather just tears you up inside. :roll:
The Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood, a crime-plagued area well, at least one of her babydaddies fits in! just blocks from the former Charleston Naval Base in North Charleston, is one of the most economically depressed areas in North Charleston. Eighty-five percent of its residents are renters and a staggering 98 percent of its children live in poverty Yup.. thanks to dumbass lazy jerks like Brenda Kelly. It's a neighborhood Kelly has called home for four years, but with bills to pay, she doesn't know how much longer she'll be there. She said she feels safe, but on her walks she clips a small knife to her pants, just in case she needs to protect herself.
She's never had to use it, but it's there for people who get close enough to see it.
"I don't want you to think that I fear for my life," Kelly said. But she might encounter beggars or people strung out on crack.
"You never know what they might do," she said.
It's about a mile and a quarter from Kelly's home to the old Shipwatch Square shopping center, where she works at a discount clothing store. Kelly started working as a sales associate at the retail outlet six months ago with the promise that she would be able to step up into a management position. Kelly often runs the cash register, greets customers and rearranges sections. There you have it. She's at six bucks an hour AT A NEW JOB. This isn't even a pay rate she'd be stuck at forever. Do they ask her what happened to the job she had before this one? Noooooo...
"I like my job," Kelly said. "I like the people I work with."
But she would also like to earn more money. Well, honey, you didn't go into work until 2:30 in the afternoon. Why don't you get a job at McDonald's or some other joint that opens up earlier?
It might be a year before she receives a raise, unless the South Carolina Legislature passes a bill raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 per hour before then. A measure in Congress would increase the minimum wage to $7.25 by 2009 in incremental steps.
Most weeks, Kelly works 40 hours, 40 hours? 40 hours? You're going to whine about being broke & ONLY WORK 40 HOURS? STFU! taking home $260 to $300 every two weeks after the court takes out $117 in child support. Did you catch it? There's another hint as to what kind of woman she is. She doesn't pay child support, her checks are garnished for some reason... the courts FORCE HER to pay. Her first baby daddy clearly has more drive & initiative than she does. That's probably part of the reason HE has custody! When Virginia's Department of Social Services set the payments Kelly worked as a gas station manager earning between $35,000 to $40,000 a year. And she hasn't been back to court in the past ELEVEN YEARS to get it adjusted? Lazy dumbass!
"Considering my income and what I was paying, it didn't seem that much to me," she said.
She quit that job when Ambur was born in 1996. With only a high school education, Kelly has been unable to find a job that pays similar wages. So, she QUIT the only job she ever had that paid well? WTF? Why am I supposed to feel sorry for her, again?
Despite her situation, she hasn't asked the court to reduce her payments. Because she's a lazy dumbass. Clearly.
With rent of $515 a month, Kelly has little money left for anything else. Like a brain. She earns so little that she and her children qualify for the Food Stamp Program and Medicaid Health Insurance. Woohoo! I'm sure glad my taxes are going to help this idiot out! Aren't you? She's a viiiiiiiiictim, afterall! On a recent Tuesday, a $5 bill Kelly found in the street helped pay for her evening meal during a break. Otherwise she would have eaten nothing. Did you guys see the picture? I she starving? Nooooo... actually, she looks a little hefty to my eyes. She also has a monthly water bill averaging $70, and monthly utility bills run about $300.
"Thank God my sister lives with me," Kelly said.
Johnson and her three children share a four-bedroom home on Baxter Street with Kelly and her four younger children. Johnson helps pay utility bills using her monthly federal assistance of $1,200, and she watches Kelly's children in the afternoon and evenings. In other words, we have two welfare queens living it up... one DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A JOB!
On school days, Ambur and Christopher go to Metanoia's Young Leaders Program after school. The program at St. Matthew Baptist Church on Reynolds Avenue teaches children about leadership, pairs them with mentors Thank GOD the two welfare queens aren't the only adults in these kids lives! and gives them time to finish homework. Most nights, the program also provides an evening meal through the Lowcountry Food Bank's Kids Cafe program. Through informal surveys, the staff knows that most children in the program won't eat again until school breakfast. Pathetic.
On this night, Christopher finishes his homework early so he helps set the table for the program's 38 other children. He begins pouring whole milk into cups, but Rev. Evelyn Oliveira, co-director of the program, interrupts. The milk needs to be saved for the following night's meal. This afternoon they will eat a meatball and a scoop of potatoes along with their vitamins. On Kelly's workdays, her sister picks up and cares for the children.
By the time Kelly returns from work, usually close to 9 p.m., her children will be asleep. Wait... she left for work at 2:30, walked several blocks to work, meaning she probably got there around three & is back home by 9pm? That leaves little room for anything more than a 6 hour shift! How many days a week is she working?
After Christmas, Kelly's hours were temporarily reduced in the post-holiday shopping slowdown. On a recent day off, Kelly had the opportunity to walk the children home - picking them up just before 6 p.m., when the leadership program ends. Ambur and Christopher pulled out their report cards on the walk showing all A's and B's.
"I tell them all the time that they need to get good grades. I have no way to send to them to college, and high school is not enough anymore," Kelly said.
Back at home, Kelly further reviewed the report cards while perched on the arm of a peeling fake-leather chair. That's it. Sit on the arm of the chair. It'll last longer that way. :roll:
She read that a Chicora Elementary teacher wrote that Christopher knocks her socks off because of his marked improvement. Kelly smiled. "That's good, Christopher."
Her children typically make the A-B honor roll. The Saint Andrew's High School graduate tells Ambur that now she needs to work on making the president's list, an honor for students who obtain all A's. Kelly wants her children to make it into magnet schools rather than the alternative: attending Brentwood Middle School, a failing urban school.
While they talk, Johnson makes final preparations to beadle hats in the kitchen. The dish includes a slice of fried bologna served over mashed potatoes and topped with cheese. Johnson made the meal from leftovers in the kitchen. Leftover bologna?
Most of the children say they are not hungry but eat a little. With three of seven children in the Kelly and Johnson home eating their evening meal elsewhere, planning meals becomes difficult. THE HORROR! Six hours of work a day for one of them & uh... no hours for the other! It's AMAZING! AMAZING, I tell you, that they can manage to pull off this complex planning of mashed potatoes, bologna & cheese! They're executive material!
Johnson and Kelly skip dinner to make sure the children have enough to eat. Wait, the kids aren't hungry because they already got a FREE DINNER elsewhere... and only "eat a little" wtf?
"It's rough the last week of the month," Kelly said. "We eat a lot of hot dogs." Mmmmmmm hot dogs! Hey, dumbass, there are other foods in the grocery store that provide more sustainence per ounce & per dollar than f'ing hot dogs. Of course, that might require you cutting into your clearly busy schedule to actually prepare a real meal!
Kelly's monthly $300 in food stamps runs out quickly. If a friend can offer a ride, Kelly shops at a grocery warehouse once a month. Otherwise, the sisters walk to a convenience store on the corner, Oh... you're shopping at a convenience store. Brilliant! I'm sure that even though you can walk to a shopping center where there's a clothing store, you can't manage to walk to a grocery store... where items cost twice as much as a regular grocery store. Johnson says she often sends her children to the store on the corner of Baxter Street. On one night, she sends her oldest son, Lorenzo, 14, there twice, once to buy dog food Wait! Dog food? WFT are you buying dog food for? You supposedly can't feed your kids but you have A dog? and second time for a dose of medicine. Uh... wait, the idiot takes two trips? One for dog food & one for medicine? How much medicine are you people taking? Does it come in bottles so big the kid can't put it in his/her pocket?
After dinner, Christopher and John run through the house with Nerf guns while James rides a small bike through the house, Good idea. Along with sitting on the arms of the chairs, go ahead & ride a damned bike through the house. Clearly, you'll be able to replace the carpet any time you want, so go ahead & f-up the carpet you have racing through a blanket hung over the doorway to keep in the heat. Kelly's nephew, Robert Mims, 12, sits quietly in the living room drawing a car and then begins clearing items from a bunk bed in his mother's room, where he has chosen to sleep.
He brings out the casing to a shotgun shell, a memento from a trip he took to Ohio. Git'R Done!
"I find ones like this outside all the time," Robert said.
When they first moved to Chicora, Robert heard the shot from a gun and saw the aftermath: A victim ran from the bushes across the street, and an ambulance and police rushed to the scene. Around that same time period, Johnson saw sparks of gunfire come from behind the home. Those were the only such incidents, however, and Johnson says her family is as safe as it can be anywhere. Clearly. :roll:
This next paragraph is going to describe the horrid living conditions... you can skip it. I'll explain why later.
A piece of artificial wood blocks a broken window panel in the front room. A window unit in the dining room is the home's sole heat source. Drafts come from everywhere, so blankets are hung over doorways and windows. The sisters' four sons share one room, and the two girls share another. On a recent cold night, Ambur takes a futon in her mother's room and Johnson's daughter, Briona, sleeps in her mother's room. Johnson and Kelly close their doors and use space heaters to warm their rooms. The door to the boys' room is kept open in the hopes that heat from the dining room unit will reach it. The women once plugged space heaters in all four bedrooms, but the electric bill was more than their rent.
At night, two mixed-breed dogs and two bull mastiffs come indoors, taking over living room sofas. Wait... not A dog, but FOUR dogs? Bull Mastiffs? Those are big f'ing dogs! Imagine how much these idiots are spending on dog food! How's this... if you were really going hungry, you'd eat those damn dogs... not hot dogs. So far the only intruders have been rats, which Angel, a medium-sized brown dog, has caught and killed on two occasions, Kelly said. Droppings on top of a water heater in the laundry room signal another rat may be lurking, but none of the children have been harmed.
When the alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m., Kelly stays in the bed just a few more minutes, knowing that as soon as she stands up, her feet will begin to ache. Yeah... from the tortorous six hour shift. :roll: Years of standing through monotonous jobs such as a gas station manager and a store clerk have taken a toll on her arches. Johnson awoke first to open the oven door and cranked the temperature to 500 degrees to heat the bathroom off the kitchen.
"No one wants to get out of their warm bed to go to a cold bathroom," Johnson said.
The home's second bathroom, in the far back of the home, is too cold to enter. Most mornings, the kids wake up at 7 a.m.; put on their school uniforms; and then take turns sharing the bathroom, carefully sidestepping a hole in the floor as they cross the threshold.
Again, ignore the details about the sh!tty house.
Once dressed, the seven children gather in the living room, waiting to leave for school. Except for the littlest one - James, who is still asleep - the children will eat breakfast in their classrooms at school before lessons begin. They qualify for free breakfasts and lunches at school. So, they get free breakfast, free lunch and free dinner. Gotchya. :roll: In fact, it seems that weekends aside, the ONLY meal these two women are preparing consist of leftover mashed potatoes, bologna, cheese and hotdogs?
At 7:30 a.m., Kelly gets up to walk the younger children to school. Ambur sneaks a swig of Mountain Dew before heading outside. MOUNTAIN DEW! That's a NAME BRAND COLA! 'Round here, they're three bucks for a 12 pack. Fancy stuff. It's a good thing they can afford such luxuries!
On the walk, Ambur joins a classmate as Chicora Elementary comes into view. Kelly leaves them at the school door. The early morning routine and walk are the longest period of time she has to spend with her school-age children on workdays.
"I love my children and I wish our situation was better, but I don't see that happening," Kelly said.
Without a car or regular transportation, she must find work at places she can get to on foot.
Kelly once worked 12- to 13-hour days at a convenience store on Baxter Street. She earned more money, but she quit after 18 months. Whew! That's the spirit!
"I couldn't deal with it. I never saw my children," Kelly said. Wait... didn't they just say that she doesn't get to see them as it is because her work schedule is opposite their school schedule? The reason she quit that job with 12 to 13 hour days is because she's a lazy fvcking dumbass who would rather have YOU pay for her kids food, education etc...
Within a week, she had found her sales job at the retail clothing store. It's one of the lower-paying jobs she has taken. Oh! BRILLIANT! She quit the job at the gas station BEFORE SHE FOUND A REPLACEMENT! Just DAMN!
Kelly isn't sure how she ended up in her situation. Well, hell, I'm not even through with the article & it's prettyd damned clear to me! It's not any one thing: child support payments, low paying jobs or poor choices in men.
"It's a vicious cycle I can't seem to get out of. One thing after another keeps me held back," Kelly said. Kelly, YOU have held yourself back. You are a lazy sack of shit. You are a bridge person. Wear the badge with honor. Normal people would wear it with shame, but clearly you enjoy your victim status.
Four years ago, she reached the end of her rope. A friend had taken her in, sharing a two-bedroom trailer. Kelly, pregnant with James and going into labor, was told that she would need to find a new place to live. The day she got out of the hospital, she drove around town looking for a place to go. She moved into a hotel for a month before John and James' grandmother, Roberta Campbell Porterfield, agreed to rent Kelly her current home in Chicora. It's unclear how much longer she and her family will live there.
In December, Kelly used her rent money to buy Christmas presents. Porterfield hasn't returned to the home since Kelly refused to pay the rent. Now the home is listed for sale. On Feb. 2, Kelly found an eviction notice on her door. Porterfield has accepted partial rent payments since July and said that Kelly owes her $1,600.
"I've tried to help her out," Porterfield said. "I am not going to take care of Brenda. You can't live nowhere for free." Daz rite. you cain't live nowhere fo free. Uh, actually you can if you're not a lazy dumbass piece of shit. More on that later too...
Porterfield once filed to evict Kelly in April, but she canceled the proceeding after the two came to an agreement.
Porterfield said all she wants is for Kelly to pay something. Porterfield said the court will send Kelly a second eviction notice Thursday. Kelly could request a hearing, but it's unclear if she will. Hey, I bet she won't! She's too damn lazy to do anything else...
"What am I supposed to do? In court it would be my word against hers," Kelly said. And clearly, you're as trustworthy as a ticking Yugo.
Kelly once considered applying for a subsidized housing program, but she said she has already given up so much information for other assistance programs that she doesn't know if she wants to fill out more paperwork.
There you have it. There's another great payoff. That crappy house? That eviction? It's all meaningless. She's just too damned lazy to fill out the paperwork to get section 8 housing! Holy hell! This woman is South Carolina's PosterChild for the minimum wage!!!! HA!
Kelly hoped that she could purchase the home through a local home-buyers program, but her credit report shows a past due medical bill. Her credit report also notes that she owes past due child support for her children in Virginia because of gaps between jobs.
Preparing for another day of work, Kelly changes into a $22 outfit of brown slacks and a dress shirt. It's the first outfit Kelly has bought herself in six months. She grabs a few slices of processed cheese, an impromptu lunch that she shares with one of her dogs.
"They say this country is so rich," Kelly said, "but why are so many people living paycheck to paycheck, just one week from being in the street?" I'll leave that one alone.
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So there you have it. Our friends in the media have searched far & wide to find someone actually living on the minimum wage & this is it. She's got six kids by three fathers. Lost two of them to the first dad who sued for custody & won. Not only that, but her checks are garnished for childsupport... a court order is generally required for such things.
She has quit two previous jobs that paid more money. She says she quit because she wanted to be with her kids, but the crappy job she has now has opposite scheduling as her kids' schooling.
She lives in a dumpy crappy house with her welfare winning sister & her three kids. Along with them are four dogs... at least two of them are pretty damned big. She could get public housing, but she's too lazy to fill out the paperwork. She's also too lazy to file papers to get child support from the only baby daddy not in jail.
What childcare she does need is free.
She says she works 40 hours a week, but clearly doesn't work any longer than 6 hours at a time. Her kids get all three meals free Monday through Friday. What grocery shopping needs to be done happens at a convenience store & includes Mountain Dew, bologna, & hot dogs.
The clencher, of course, is the fact that she's in a $6/hr job - not because she was layed off - not because she was fired for taking care of her sick kids - but because she quit. She quit her other job before she even found a replacement. She's at a $6/hr job & she's only been there 6 months. It's a new job. She's barely past the probationary period.
She's an idiot. To hell with the fvcking minimum wage.
I'm sitting here wondering... any of you guys who support the minimum wage... have you ever actually been poor?
EDIT:
For a true understanding of just what an uncaring ass I am, follow this link. It's a little flash animation type thing that the newspaper put together.
If you pay attention, you'll notice a few things are omitted from the animation, although touching piano music wasn't omitted. The fact that the landlord is her former mother-in-law, the fact that she could get public housing but is too lazy to fill out the paperwork, and the room piled with clothes & a space heater kinda' caught -or didn't- my eye.
http://www.charleston.net/multimedia...age/index.html
I was also pissy enough to google a few things in the story... we have the street she lives on (it appears on Google Maps Satellite image to be only about 300 feet long,) the after-school program at Metanoia, the Chicora Elementary school, and the reference to the Shipwatch Square shopping center where she works.
The church & school are less than a mile from the house, but the shopping center is 1.9 miles away. That's a 4 mile round trip, so we KNOW she can at least walk that far... but, she wouldn't have to. She passes a place called "S&L Supermarket" on her way home from work.
Low & behold, though, that withing 2 1/2 miles, there are two other grocery stores. One is a Piggly Wiggly... kind of a discount cheap grocery store. Good prices, in other words. Enjoy that bologna. :roll:
Okay, I'm done. You can now talk amongst yourselves about what a jerk I must be!
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Originally Posted by Roomy
