Now it’s time to think about paying the rent.
Maybe it’s the mortgage.
Whatever it is, there’s probably a bit of the following as well:
- Medical Debt;
- Student Loan Debt;
- Credit Card Debt;
- The Winter Power Bill;
- Car Payments.
I’m sure I’m missing some things.
In my household we also have the car insurance come through this month.
That’s an extra $248 that I don’t have.
Coupled with the rent of $675 and it makes the end of December really tight.
On top of that we’ve got the money spent on Christmas gifts. I have to say – I did a lot better this year in budgeting and not spending too much.
I just can’t, not with the rent and other bills coming up.
I’m not alone.
We know that 15% of Montanans live in poverty. That’s 155,000 people.
Many are just like Lori Swartz here in Missoula.
She wrote a letter to the Independent this week called “Time for a raise.” In it she talks about working 70 hours a week as a home care worker.
She does that through 3 jobs, two of which pay $11 an hour and one of which pays $10 an hour.
Lori figures she’d need $14.36 an hour to survive in Montana, and the Alliance for a Just Society agrees with her.
Currently, however, we have what I refer to as the “nickel insult,” or an $8.05 minimum wage.
In Montana, much like the rest of America, we don’t care about people.
We don’t care about old people and we sure as shit don’t care about the struggling people trying to take care of them.
Many times these home care workers are approaching their senior years as well. Hell, in the letter Lori mentions doing that job for the past 30 years!
We have problems.
We have serious problems in that we think a whole segment of society are dog shit.
That’s what we think – we think these people are the crud and muck that collects on the bottom of our shoe.
The pay we give them sure says that.
“I have very little left at the end of the month for clothes, a little gift for my grandchildren or to put away savings in case of an emergency,” Lori writes.
And when it comes to an emergency, she’s talking about “something like a car repair or reduced hours.”
Yeah, that’s an emergency for someone living in poverty. It’s not a loss of a job or a catastrophic illness – though those would certainly qualify as emergencies.
Nope, it’s something like having a $100 problem with your car, or losing 10 hours off a paycheck.
Sometimes people wonder why I hate Bullock so much, why I hate Democrats.
It’s because of people like Lori.
We’re failing her, we’re failing her bad.
Perhaps that’s not accurate, however. To fail someone you had to give a shit about them to begin with.
We never gave a shit about Lori and people like her - $8.05 an hour says that quite clearly.
Maybe she is getting $2.95 more than the hourly wage.
Wow, that’s $236 more every two weeks.
I suppose we should be happy with that. We should be happy with what’s thrown to us, like the dogs we are.
But I’m not happy.
No, instead I’m pissed.
Montana Democrats aren’t.
Steve Bullock isn’t.
That’s why I don’t give much of a damn about them or their “ideas” in 2016.
They have none.