Who gets the Government handouts?

Congress has voted against a $700B bailout for bad management decisions at financial institutions.

I can’t help but look at that in a different context. That $700B would be a great help to CFS patients.

It could pay all the American CFS patients’ disability benefits for years. That would help the economy, because we’d actually have money to spend instead of buying as little as possible in order to stretch our savings.

It would provide enough money to give each of us a year of Ampligen treatment to get us back to work/taxpaying status. Again, putting a million people back to work would be a great help to the economy.

It could provide the necessary funding to do the research to find a treatment/cure/vaccine to get us back to work and prevent anyone from ever again being off work.

But, instead, the proposal calls for those who made bad decisions are to be rewarded and those of us who were innocent victims of a particularly nasty virus to be accused of fraud when we ask for a pittance from the government.

Although the law does not require you to be indigent in order to get SSDI, I’ve had judges suggest that I’m not homeless yet, therefore I don’t "need" the benefits, and won’t get them until I do come in and testify that I have lost everything and am living in the gutter. Why not apply that same standard to the management of the failing institutions? Make them sell all their houses, yachts, cars, and bail out their own institutions. Only when they have given back every cent of their ill-gotten gains and are penniless should the government step in.

I’ve been accused of somehow bringing this on myself, and therefore should not be rewarded with SSDI benefits. Why isn’t that standard applied here? They brought it on themselves with their greed, and management shouldn’t be rewarded by keeping their jobs and stock portfolios.

I’ve been accused of committing fraud in order to get my SSDI benefits. Where’s the matching accusation of fraud against these people? People were approved for mortgages without regard for whether they could ever pay them off, and now, as granny would say, the chickens have come home to roost.

I bought only as much house as I could afford (actually, being a responsible sort, I bought a lot less house than I could afford so that I could put a much larger percentage down); no one is concerned about helping me out or rewarding me for my responsible actions. No, everyone’s concern is for the greedy people who could have afforded this house, but instead built a (pun intended) house of cards in order to leverage their way into something three or four or five times the size, and are now being foreclosed on because their eyes were bigger than their stomachs – or their wallets – but they want to keep a house that they still can’t afford to pay for.

I have more legal right to my SSDI benefits than they have to their house (on which many have barely been paying the interest, no payment toward the principal), but it’s their plight that gets everyone up in arms, while a million CFS patients having to fight the system for a monthly pittance is completely overlooked.

There’s an old fable about the ant and the grasshopper. The ant works hard and gathers food for himself, so he’s snug in a house with plenty to eat when winter comes. The grasshopper plays all summer, then finds himself out in the cold and starving. http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/36.html  In Aesop’s day, the grasshopper was expected to take responsibility for his bad decisions and pay the consequences. Nowadays, the ant is supposed to give the grasshopper half of his food, even if that means the ant doesn’t have enough for himself, because there are no consequences for bad decisions.

Apparently, these days the only people who have to pay consequences are the innocent victims of viruses and incompetent doctoring, who are accused of being responsible for their health problems and told they should be able to work if they just stopped thinking bad thoughts. While those who really are responsible for their own bad situations are entitled to government bailouts, no questions asked.

People have been advising me for 8 years that I could get my SSDI benefits in a jiffy with one simple little lie: just say that you’re "depressed and suicidal". There’s no way of proving that, it’s based on your word alone. Yet, a million CFSpatients are denied benefits on the false claim that "the only evidence is your word, and that’s not enough". I have abnormal blood tests, other patients have abnormal brain scans, but that evidence is not considered.  Many of us did everything right (a fair number of CFS patients were athletes who ate properly and exercised daily) and got sick anyway.  But we're blamed for bringing it on ourselves while those who truly did bring misfortune on themselves get bailouts.

And then people wonder why I get offended that there’s government money for everyone and everything except easing the suffering of a million patients?