Editor’s note: Neither the presidential nor vice-presidential debates have addressed policies to help the growing poor underclass as more middle class people continue to slip into an impoverished state. Republicans continue to paint the poor as morally deficient–undisciplined, lazy and dependent upon big government. KPBS in San Diego is running a series about the poor among us. Tess Vigland interviews three families living in poverty in City Heights. Being poor is not easy.

Reprinted with the permission of John Scalzi at whatever.scalzi.com.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.   [Read more…]

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Until a few years ago, I had a neighbor named Donna. Widowed well before she was ready, she plodded on, alone in her leaky house, unread mail and remembrances piling up in dusty corners. We invited her to holiday meals, cared for her dying cat, and, when the 2007 wildfire forced our town’s evacuation, she came with us, enjoying a prolonged pajama party in a small, borrowed apartment, raucous with four women. We ate out, watched movies late into the night, laughed about the yard-waste bag full of adult diapers Donna offered to share with us, found succor for our fears in chocolate and wine and camaraderie. And, while combing Donna’s hair one evening and avoiding a fairly large knob on her head, we learned that she was Mormon.

“They used to say we have horns,” she said, “like the devil. That’s my Mormon horn.”

I’d never heard that particular slur, and Donna laughed it off, saying the lump was just a fatty deposit, so I thought little of it — until recently.   [Read more…]