Portland wants voters to pass a school bond that would substantially increase property taxes. Mine would go up about $500/yr. Really? In a fucking recession, with people barely making ends meet, you want to whack them with a 15% tax increase to pay for school replacements because you didn’t do the goddamned periodic maintenance? And you want to provide covered play areas at eight schools? Are you fucking shitting me? And they also want money to pay off debts from previous projects. WTF? And to pay operational costs, which is sort of like taking out a loan to buy groceries. These are some seriously fucked up people.
Ah, the beauty of raising taxing in recession. That just happened in my future MIL’s school district. So much time elapsed with the lawsuits that were filed and so forth (also structural issues with the ground they want to build on) that a campaign was mounted and the two dissenting school board voters were ousted. It boggles the mind. It’s to build an entirely new high school. The old one, by the way, is less than 40 years old.
Mini rant - posters who rant about something going on in the Dope without posting a link… 
Buh?
I only made it to post #23 - I assume it only got worse?
I love this suggestion. Unfortunately, I don’t work in an office. I should glue one to the floor and watch how many people try to pick it up. Then mock them about eating candy off the floor.
A lot of politicians here in Texas love to act tough about cutting out the fat in the budget. The problem is, they sometimes mistake the muscle and even bone for fat. They scrimp on or cut out maintenance altogether, and then they’re surprised when shit breaks down. It’s like they would expect to drive a car forever without ever changing the oil, or even putting gas in it once in a while. However, when it comes to plum contracts for their friends, well, THAT’S not fat!
I was trying to not encourage people to feed the troll. (After all, this particular troll is on a carefully balanced diet; random feedings will throw off the balance.)
…Because, dear dipshit bureaucrat, I cannot for the life of me figure out how in the bloody fuck you think you are doing any goddamned good at all.
So I sent out emails, figuring that this would enable people not to be dipshits. For example, ‘agoraphobia.’ It may seem strange, but I was convinced that I was one of the few and the weak who suffered from this as a result of doing lots of convoys, being in combat, etc., etc., Lot of close calls. You know what a close call means? It means somebody else died instead of you, sometimes in front of you. Then a friend of mine forwarded me an article and I was sort of both horrified and relieved to see that someone else had the same problem. So, why then, has the VA not figured this out?
So, agoraphobia. It’s what results when you fuck up a patient’s care repeatedly, and let those panic attacks turn into full-fledged horrors, involving fainting, vomiting, and at best self-induced starvation for extended periods of time before and after panic attacks, because the VA insists that their shitty therapy will do the trick. Except it didn’t. It might have had something to do with the fact that the first therapy group they put me in—well after I confided certain facts about the way some of the male soldiers in my unit behaved-----contained men who were in therapy for the purpose of getting their sentences reduced. For what, you say? For things like wife-beating, girl-friend beating (same guy–and a cop, too!), sexual assault (“Hey, I didn’t force her!” —but raping her while she was unconscious after you offered her a safe space is okay?) and the extremely high ranking officer who got offended after he sighed about how there wasn’t anything wrong with ‘admiring a nice ass while it walks down the hall.’ And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. Later on, another woman who was depressed about being harassed at work joined us, and these guys groomed her to be the perfect victim: don’t complain, just accept it, go along with it, ignore it, it’ll go away…Ahem.
So shocker of shockers I got terribly depressed and while the VA put pressure on me to think happy thoughts and make the panic attacks go away, they didn’t do much about the suicidal feelinsgs, because as we all know, soldiers who were considered responsible enough to serve in delicate situations and handle both classified material and high-powered weapons are the sort to lie about their injuries. Or at least that’s the way the VA treats them. I tried to kill myself.
And since then the VA has cut off my transportation, then cut off my meds, forcing me to go cold turkey on not one, not two, not three, not four, but five fairly serious meds. And engage in a battle of wills which I’m convinced is devoted to notihng less than proving that my condition is not as bad as I say it is. Hey, all it takes it them endangering my health, right?
So I’ve been emailing people all over, looking for help, as I’m having screaming nightmares that leave me terrified to sleep. I used to wake up my roommate with screams, and one time I blacked my own eye because I was flailing around so much. The result is that I’m sleeping ninety minutes at a stretch, and that’s if I’m lucky. And of course, this does not do good things for the panic attacks or the agoraphobia, which I have to mention to said bureaucrats and what happens?
Every. Frickin’. One.Of. These. Morons turns around and says, “So can we meet somewhere?” And after I point out that I did, in fact, say, ahem, AGORAFUCKINGPHOBIA they often times suggest…“Coffee shop?”
The final straw? This person just sent me an email suggesting a hospital. In another city. At least two hours from here. How do I get from here to, say, the bus station? From the bus station to the hospital? And reverse the trip? Aside from which…yeah, another city?
I’ve called my congress critters—one meeting took place in the congress critter’s office, which means the VA doesn’t give a shit. I’ve called the governor’s office.
Lest anyone be tempted to suggest that I might be inspring such behavior, I have another female friend who’s a 1st. Sgt. in the Pacific Northwest. One day she went to the chow hall for lunch, not knowing the that one of the Iraqi National Guard soldiers waiting to eat had removed the plates from his flak vest and replaced them with C-4. He killed 28 of her soldiers right in front of her. Oh, and that’s something else. When a man mourns fallen comrades, it’s noble. When a woman does it, it’s either because she’s maternal or women are just soft like that.
And she laughed her head off when I predicted the VA’s response to this: “Hey, want a PAP smear?”
At least the insurgents are frickin’ honest about what their objective is in life.
margin,
Wow. I don’t know what to say as I’m slightly confused by your situation, but it sounds bad. 
My mini-rant is now going to seem even more trivial:
To my anti-vaccination, ionized water loving sister:
I realize that with the wonders of being pregnant, you are experiencing a whole new life.
A life in which you believe a dolphin swimming nearby is watching out for your unborn baby. I just wondered if the dolphin was thinking a slow moving pregnant woman might be easier to hump.
But this morning, in my in-box, is an email from you about the evils of fluoride. It apparently causes Down syndrome and thyroid problems. Please. Last year you told me my plastic shower curtain was going to make me fat.
But don’t send me unsubstantiated claims and then tell me that I may want to ‘research’ your unsubstantiated claims. (I googled it anyway but all the websites are completely unknown to me so I’m thinking this is another load of her ‘I believe anything random hippies believe but not doctors!’ crap.)
Plus one to that. Margin, take care, OK? I wish I knew what else to say to you. You’ve been to hell and back, that at least I can see.
Oh, hey - how’d the PAP smear go? 
Oh, pleeeeese share the “logic” behind that one with us! I love these, in a sick and twisted way. My mom sent me one a couple years back that claimed, among other things, that drinking distilled water would give you cancer, because distilled water is acidic. Bwuh? 
Ah, thank you Google. She sent me what Snopes is refuting here.
Wait, does that mean she got a glassed in shower? That her hubby paid for?
I might just have to reconsider my feelings on woo…
Margin, take care. That sounds like hell. You do sound smart, getting people involved and telling your story. Contact any journalist friends you have or had long ago. They’d be interested in a good story like that. Not that your life is a “story” - but bringing attention to it may bring better care for you.
Don’t get me started on deferred maintenance. I’ve had to deal with that shit all my working life. But this is in the realm of pure and simple neglect, as they are proposing to replace seven schools all at once. People with homes valued at $500K are looking at a tax increase of over $1300/yr, if this passes.
its rely true people are doing like that no one is here to ask them that why are they doing like that ?
{Homer Simpson}Mmmmm - floor candy.{/HS}
My province is going to take a very long time to recover from a premier who was excellent at cutting “fat” out of the budget - unfortunately, he considered healthcare and education to be “fat”. It’s a bit of a travesty that I live in the richest province in the country (and arguably one of the richest areas in North America) and I can’t see a doctor in the emergency room in under eight hours, and elective surgery can take up to two years to get done.
That’s a heck of a long hospital stay. Two fucking years from intake to discharge, all for an elective procedure?!
Wow, two years for elective surgery. My grandmother was complaining hers was two weeks.
runs and hides
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It usually costs much less to prevent a problem than solve it. Sometimes a problem can never be really fixed after a certain point.
Her logic behind plastic shower curtains making you fat is that chemicals release in plastic when heated and cause hormonal changes. Or something. 
lindsaybluth,
I believe she went cloth, unfortunately. (Hmm…or maybe nothing at all)
Though I have new information about fluoride when I asked for cites, so just to keep everyone safe:
“I am not sure how much people are allowed to talk about it. When an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) person tried to bring up the risks, he was fired. They did have to rehire him because it was proven that he was fired for political reasons. The government uses this as a cheap way to get rid of the toxic waste: Fluoride. It is much cheaper than having to dispose of it properly.”
Wtf.
Lady of the Lake, if you mix FLUORIDE with TOXIC SLUDGE you get EASILY DISPOSABLE STUFF.
Or weren’t you on the /crazytown email listserv?