The Grapes of Wrath-2023

There aren’t too many books that I have re-read in my lifetime, but today I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. By far he is my favorite author. He makes me see the characters, and the places he writes about with amazing clarity. His writing style is what made me read this book a second time. It has probably been forty years in between, but I still remember the story, and yet I enjoyed it more this time than I did the first. I doubly enjoyed his descriptions of the time and the sadness of the tale.

The Grapes of Wrath has so many messages such as: the effect of weather forcing a mass migration, the desperation of poor people, the strength of family, the will to live, the shame of accepting government help in extreme poverty, the effect of starvation on health, the rejection by the communities that were affected by the influx. The list goes on. Steinbeck tells the history of the era in great detail. He was born in an agricultural valley in central California and most likely witnessed the people streaming into the region looking for work. He understood the attitudes of agricultural workers forming unions, and the land owners fighting to protect their properties. It is a scary time and a sad time because the differences between the people could be likened to the differences between North and South in the Civil War. In this case the land owners against those who don’t own land.

Most of the migrants came from Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Most were share croppers. They didn’t own land but rented the land and the rent payment was a share of the crop they produced. When the global warming of the nineteen thirties hit the plains and water dried up the land turned to dust. The winds blew the dust away from the farms and destroyed them. Crops were lost, lives went bankrupt. Bankers foreclosed on the sharecroppers and the landowners sold to corporate farms. The tiny farms of twenty and forty acres that once provided sustenance for families became massive company farms tilled by modern tractors on thousands of acres to provide a return on investment. People be damned, it was up to them to move on, and to provide for themselves. Had the migration moved slower, and the people who left to find jobs did so in a trickle things might have been different. The combination of weather killing crops and corporations buying the land to make money fast caused the migration to happen rather suddenly. It is estimated that two hundred and fifty thousand people were displaced from their farms in one summer, and the majority moved to California to find jobs as pickers. They moved in old junky cars and trucks bought from charlatan dealers who raided junk yards for inventory and sold the vehicles to desperate people who needed to find work.

The current situation in the United States is not much different, except the migrants aren’t coming across the state line, but across the border from starving Central America, or they are refugees displaced by war. They come by the thousands because they have seen the promise of the United States. What hasn’t changed much is our attitude toward the intruders. In modern America, those coming in are not coming in junky jalopies that barely run, they walk in, and our government uses buses or airplanes to transport them all across the country to unsuspecting cities where they are let loose to fend for themselves. In some cases the receiving city puts them into unoccupied hotels, until more suitable housing can be found.

This book was first published in 1939 and the story closely relates to the current conditions in the USA. Does this mean that we have not solved a single worldwide social problem since then? Why are we paying all the exorbitant taxes? Where does the money go? One place it goes is to fuel the salaries of all the degreed people working for all the bureaucracies invented to deal with social problems like homelessness, starvation, etc.. Then there are those people who work diligently to expand those services. I often wonder how many staff people we employ to handle a single poor person.

Hooverville

In the new emigration the people’s wants are similar to those of the thirties. Most seek only employment so they can better themselves. They aren’t really coming here to go on welfare, they want to make their own way by working. The people who do go on welfare are those who are born here, and are too lazy to take the low paying jobs that immigrants are willing to do. What the impact will be on the USA is that the influx of immigrants will lower the standard of living for everyone.

I didn’t expect this book report to turn into my ranting about society and the ills of big government, but it did, and I am sorry for that, but now that it is in type I must post my thoughts and opinions.

Soup Kitchens versus Food Stamps

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I still visualize pictures from the Great Depression of the thirties. The most striking images are those of destitute, out of work men lined up to get a cup of soup and a piece of bread. Thankfully, I never lived in those lines, neither did my parents. Mom and Dad were too frugal and conservative to allow themselves to get into a situation where they could not feed their kids. The tiny yard behind the house served as the City Farm. She did not waste a single square inch of soil. We had vegetables all summer and through most of the winter. Mom’s canning skills were excellent and she canned the surplus perishables. Root vegetables like potatoes, parsley, and carrots went into in a cold bed under the porch. Her chicken coops yielded eggs, fresh chicken, and pigeons; yes pigeons. I write a lot about the experiences under the category of Biography. You can go there and experience some of these times through my short stories.

Candidate Newt Gingrich has labeled Obama the Food Stamp president. Today, I saw a response from the president where he calls Bush the Food Stamp president. Yes, the number of people who went on food stamps during the Bush administration was real, as they were for Clinton, and presidents before him. The simple fact remains that the slope of the food stamp growth curve takes a painful turn up under Obama. It correlates with his spending curve too.

Gingrich makes his point that Obama has not done anything to help these people get off food stamps and to get a job. He is correct in his accusations. Obama should argue that he is being compassionate and keeping the jobless from starving. Blaming Bush is getting old and tired. The error of giving the jobless food stamps and extended unemployment benefits is that the jobless take advantage of the system and fake looking for work. To many of them, the benefit period becomes a paid vacation.

I have only seen one vegetable garden in my neighborhood besides my feeble plot. It belongs to an immigrant Italian who still believes in growing and canning food. He makes his own wine too, mmmn.

My cartoon depicts a typical soup line during the thirties, with a modern twist. The people standing in this line are waiting for a food stamp handout. The reality is that you no longer have to wait in line as my picture shows. Just for fun, I went online and Googled food stamps. The search turned up a government site (SNAP). This page reads like the IRS booklet one uses to complete his tax form. I went further and clicked on a prescreening page, and completed a fictitious application. I failed to meet three qualifying requirements. I went back to the beginning and completed another application. This time, I listed only my Social Security income and not Peggy’s, success. I qualified for $347.00 per month. I didn’t wait in line, and the money would come to me in the form of a debit card.

The amount $347 doesn’t sound like that much, but compare that to a single cup of soup and a piece of bread everyday after standing in line for hours. This is exactly the reason we don’t feel like the “Even Greater Depression of 2008” is no where close to the “Great Depression of the 1930’s” at all.

Do I sound like a liberal? Not at all, I believe with Newt that the dignity of a man with a job is far more valuable than a debit card. Add that 347 to an unemployment check, and we are beginning to talk some serious money here.

Why would anyone in the USA want to work when the tax payers give us such wonderful benefits?

TAXERY = SLAVERY

A Suitable Green Job For POTUS

There are a number of green jobs that Obama left off  his list of high paying positions which would make an investment in the country.  Instead, he insists on promoting ridiculous electric cars, windmills, and solar power as the answer. Yes, these are definitely ways to “green.” The problem lies in the fact that none of these technologies are even remotely close to being capable of meeting even the least of our energy demands.  A few days ago, I published a graph showing where the gallons go in the transportation scheme. Hitting on cars does not make any sense at all.  The single largest opportunity for saving oil and reducing green house gases is in shipping by boat. My calculations did not include the boats used for shipping “stuff” from China to the rest of the world. My graph only includes the oil burned in shipping oil to the U.S. The graph is below for reference.

Chart by Grumpa Joe May 18, 2011, Data from various Internet sources

This week, I learned from a very reliable source that the cursed “green” nemesis of the liberal world is in trouble. The Alaskan pipeline is running at only thirty percent capacity. Why? Because the oil field it serves is running dry.  In a short time the cost of operating the line will exceed the value of oil coming through. When it finally shuts down, conservationists will dismantle it. Once that happens, any chance of drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), only seventy-five miles away from the pipeline, will be slim to none.

The Alaskan pipeline began operation in 1977, and the greenies have been bitching about the negative effect it has on the environment ever since. The opposite is true, wildlife has adapted to the pipeline and the countryside remains pristine. Conservationists should concentrate on picking up liter in trashy U.S. cities before they hit on the pipeline.

It is clear to me that Obama wants to sink the country with his “green ” policy. He does not have a single rational concept for keeping the country moving while making  it more green except to increase the cost of energy to the point of bankruptcy. He doesn’t want to bankrupt the government, he wants to bankrupt the citizenry. He lovingly refers to it as “redistribution of wealth.”  I call it white slavery. He wants the working stiffs to feed his poor. If you have a job, you are also feeding a shadow family the size of your own.

If Obama is serious about anything, he will work a compromise and allow drilling in ANWR immediately. He will encourage a short pipeline be built to connect ANWR to the Alaskan line. If he knew anything at all, he would want to light a fire under the economy to increase the flow of taxes into the coffers. The increases could then fuel his dream to power the world with windmills. What is his problem? His dreams are too large for one term as president. His capability lacks the leadership required for the job of transforming America into socialized medicine, green energy, and a muslim nation. The job is too large. It will take a hundred years to make all that happen. In order to fulfill that dream he must eliminate every conservative from the face of the planet. Don’t get me wrong, he is working on that too. His fantastic ability to multi-task is turning him into the huge failure he is.

The trillion dollars he wasted went to buy votes, to shore up state governments,  payback unions, take over banks, buy car companies, and to nationalize student loans. During the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties, FDR at least got us some infrastructure for the money he spent. The projects didn’t have any effect on ending the Depression, but they did yield benefits. Have you ever visited a National Park to see brass plaques designating features within the park as a CCC effort? Have you wondered where Hoover dam came from, or the TVA? What is Obama’s lasting legacy: Obamacare, General Motors, Chrysler, Student Loans, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac? I’ve included Obamacare even though it is not bearing fruit for you and me. It needs a four-year head start to collect money to get is jump started. Once it gets started, the money it took four years to collect will run out, and the system will be bankrupt in eight years. Meanwhile, Medicare, a system invented in the sixties, will also be run out of money.

Big government as seen by liberals and Obama only feeds off itself. Systems get fatter, efficiency of systems drop, and we the people suffer more. Meanwhile the Fat Cat Bureaucrats continue to whip the white slaves to extract more.

City Farm

 

    I want this post to bring nostalgia to old timers, and to serve as a primer for young people. The current recession is not letting up. There are signs of economic recovery, but the news from Europe is not very good. The result may be another recession even deeper than the one we have now. The story below is from my childhood. My parents lived through the Great Depression. They knew how to survive. I was born at the end of the depression. My parents lived as though tomorrow would bring another depression. It took seventy-one years to happen, but it has finally arrived. We are on the edge of another Great Depression.

     We lived in a small two-story frame house situated on a 25 ft. wide lot in Chicago.  The house had a porch with steps leading to the city sidewalk.  Between the porch and the side walk there was room for a strip of flowers and a patch of grass.  The parkway had grass and occasionally a tree

     The space between our house and the neighbor’s was a gangway just wide enough to walk through. The back yard is what I want to describe in detail because it saved my family from starving. Immediately behind the house, dad had a postage stamp size lawn bordered on two sides by a flowerbed.  The third side was the sidewalk leading back to the alley; and the fourth side was the house. 

            At the end of the lot, dad built a one-car garage built directly on the ground.  He added a chicken coop to the side with a fenced open space for the birds.

            The plot of ground in between the garage-chicken-coop complex and the flowers along the edge of the lawn was mom’s veggie garden.  The lot was 120 feet long.  In that precious space, mom and dad managed to have a front lawn and flowerbed, a three-bedroom house, a back lawn and flowerbed, a vegetable garden, a chicken ranch and a garage.

            Mom had most of what she needed to feed the family growing right in the backyard.   She planted tomatoes, onions, kohlrabi, cabbage, corn, carrots, parsley, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, zucchini and more.  What we could not use immediately, she preserved by canning (no freezers).  The chickens provided us with eggs and meat for Sunday dinners. When we did not have chickens, she switched to raising pigeons, and even rabbits.

    When mom could not grow enough in our backyard, she found an empty lot a block away and started another garden.

     Are you ready to begin farming the backyard to feed your family, or are you going to line up to get food stamps?

New Business Ventures

     Do not underestimate the creativity and industriousness of the American people.  With a new great depression looming on the horizon, many out of work people are starting their own small businesses.  It is awe-inspiring.

     Here are eleven examples of start-ups to show you how to survive Change You Can Believe In.

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