Let’s hope she’s paying taxes this time around…

AmeriCorps: hiring tax evaders today…no background check required.

Sil Luv’s His New VISTA shirt (Photo credit: MizzD)

Riding ‘round the mean streets of Franklin: A city paved with good intentions and reared on a history of poverty.
I had no cause to get up early. Generally, I smoke, a drink too much coffee and I decide what problem I can afford to fix for the day. My spouse sequestered by demons of the mental health genre, is my anchor and therefore, never out of mind and typically on the back of Aunt Gladys moped with an attitude.
If you see me and she isn’t there…most likely the back of the t-shirt hanging from my boney frame will say, ‘If you can read this…the bitch fell off!’

This morning I toured solo!
Today, sunny, dry and seventy would have made me smile from the inside out. However, that is if an S.O.S. hadn’t been sent out from the even more impoverished side of town.
Quickly and to the point I will state my facts for I am angry and should not linger.
My mechanic, father of seven, two children disabled, and wife disabled and he himself, with chronic migraines, had called to see if I needed any work done on Gladys.
Oddly enough, Auntie seemed in good repair and I felt like messin’ her up a little today with my backwoods and backwards knowledge of mechanics.
“Nope…Why, what’s up?”
“AAgh…”
“Come on Ben spit it out. Do you need money?”
Hit the nail on the head. Proud people of hardy stock from my hometown would much rather work for the wage than ask for it in advance.
Long story short, we took a drive. I handed him a hundred dollars and bought us both a coffee. I made him vow to change the oil in my truck the next time I had gone 100,000 miles.
What gets me is this:
Wife, with mental impairments struggling to make her demons meet with the real world not asking for more than her share.
Next door neighbor, ten year armed services Veteran, owns his own business, pays it forward, can barely make ends meet.
Ben, mechanic/friend, giving it all to find some small percentage of the American Dream; born into poverty, paying taxes, promoting small business enterprise, living below poverty level.
Me, poor slob who just wants to understand our government a little better and not find fault with its apparently faulty system.

The Ambien/Annie Couvillion/Gracie Williams of the world:

Known to take nude photographs of employees while on the clock and on the property of said, employer.
Known to work and proud to brag about under the table nude modeling gigs for NHTI professor and pedophile instructors on Craigslist. NH; both jobs performed within the last six months.
Admittedly addicted to Oxycontin and other substances and worried about sporadic drug tests that AmeriCorps/VISTA/FEMA requires.
Parents are of upper middle class thinking. Both teachers for state universities: Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire.
One parent teaches economics.
When I found myself working under the table I had been employed by Irene Bridges. She drank Diet Pepsi with Seven n Seven. Drunk or sober she never thought my work worthy of payment. Course, I had been 10 years old at the time.
Working under the table, never mind the not ‘above reproach’ profession is illegal and a form of tax evasion.
Yet, here we are watching the Ambien’s of the world volunteer on our tax dollar with taxes we paid and she did not.
So, pardon me and I may need to ask her father, the economics’ professor, but the equation is much too complex for my blonde mind.
Not only was she pardoned to avoid paying taxes less six months ago. She now is considered a government employee and is still making money off the poor. All the while professing to be ‘selfishly working on the behalf of the poor.’
Well, Ben, I guess life sucks for you. As it sucks for the people I see with backpacks as their only means of housing and bicycles as their only means of transportation.
It isn’t the country that frightens me…it’s the government and/or its lack of intelligent governing bodies.