For those of you who have been following my computer episodes, my TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) laptop still has a tail and my personal PC has a blown power supply. The guy I work with who is fixing it is gonna get a power supply and I should have it back by the weekend. It's amazing how much that PC means to me. All my financial data is on it. Fortunately, I have a current backup and could reinstall Quicken, but in the meantime, I have to keep track of every financial transaction I do until I get my PC back. Normally, it's pay the bill and enter it in Quicken. Check register? Nope. It's in Quicken. I just got my credit union statement and it's begging to be reconciled. Arrrggghh!
I often find it strange that we have to get a license to get married, but not to have children. The libertarian in me says having children is none of the gummint's business, but, since one of the main causes of poverty is poor (or stupid) people having children they cannot afford (or care for) and the gummint winds up taking care of them with my money, it turns out to be the gummint's business.
We had another case of a baby dying here in Atlanta. The complete story is in Wednesday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation.
The 11-month-old boy who died in state care last week wasn't in his approved foster home when he died strapped in a car seat while an adult in the house slept nearby.
What? This is already starting off strange.
The state is trying to determine whether the baby's foster mother was allowed to leave him with anyone else, said Renee Huie, spokeswoman for the state Division of Family and Children Services.
"It depends on the situation," she said.
It depends on the situation? The baby is dead! Someone fucked up big time here!
Five adults, ages 19 through 23, and three other children, ages 2, 4 and 10, were in the apartment when the baby choked to death on piece of hot dog Nov. 7, the report said.
This was the apartment of one of the foster mother's daughters.
None of the adults in the house could tell police how the baby got the hot dog, the report said.
He was strapped in a car seat next to a bed while one of the daughters was sleeping when he died, the report said.
So let me get this straight. We have an 11 month old baby strapped in a car seat and a hot dog just walks into the daughter's bedroom and jumps in his mouth?
This is getting ridiculous. I wrote a while back about a mother who had left her child strapped in a car seat, in a hot car, while she went to work and the child died from the heat. Here we have an example of another child dying, in a car seat, (Car seats are getting dangerous) in an apartment with five adults and three other children and no one knows what happened? And this is under the care of a foster mother? Who isn't even there. And two of the other three children were also foster children, although no one knows yet if they were under the care of the same foster mother. The state has taken them back into custody. Good move.
We've been having big problems with the foster care program here in Georgia. During the gubernatorial debates, Sonny Perdue (Man, I just love living in the South. Our governor is named Sonny and our two senators are Saxby and Zell), brought up the state's foster care program and Roy Barnes said sumpin' about how some children were bound to die. Bet he wishes he could take those words back.
Anyway, what's up with the dead child's real mother?
The baby's mother is 16 years old. His father, 18-year-old George McClain, was gunned down at a Jonesboro Road gas station on Thanksgiving 2001, a few weeks before the baby was born.
Let's see we have a 16 year old girl with an 11 month old baby. Let's do some math. 11+ 9 = 20. Subtract from sixteen. There's a good chance the mother got knocked up at 14. So, do you paragons of moral virtue think that condoms shouldn't be handed out in schools? This is ridiculous!
The gunned down father's family had been fighting to get custody of the baby. Let's check them out.
(The father's mother, Pamela) Surry, 41, her daughter Shawnya, 25, and her sister, Benita Stringfellow, 40, had been trying to get the child returned since then.
Let's do some more math. 41 - 25 = 16. So Pamela had Shawnya when she was 16, and we don't even know if that was her first child.
In separate visits to the child after his foster placement, both Surry and the child's teenage mother found him ill clad and ill, they said.
But, obviously nothing was done and we have yet another death in Georgia's foster care program. I would guess that these people were black, which people would say makes me a racist, but all of these senseless deaths seem to take place in the black community. And, I happen to be right. They have a picture of the granmother and great grandmother in the paper, along with the story.
My friend Cindy, used to be a social worker back in her youthful, liberal days. Remember, Winston Churchill said, "If you're not a liberal in your twenties, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative in your thirties, you have no brain." Anyway, she told me the average age for a grandmother in the projects was mid thirties. And this is what the Great Society has wrought. We have babies having babies. If that isn't a super highway to poverty I don't know what is.
The problem is not the foster care program in Georgia. The problem is we have children having children without the emotional or financial wherewithal to take care of them. And, the only male mentioned in this article is the gunned down father. What is wrong with this picture? And where is the call from the black community about this? Oh, right. The NAACP is worried about a flag. That's more important, than poverty, crime, drugs, education, and children having children.
This just drives me up the wall. I don't like to see children dying. I don't care if they're black, white, yellow, or red. And this is preventable. Where are the black leaders on this? They're out crying racism. They're out railing against the Confederate flag. They're screaming for reparations. Meanwhile we have fourteen year old girls getting pregnant. Racism has absolutely nothing to do with that. Yes I know, we have that happening to while girls and I actually know some of them, but it is much more prevalent in the black community and that along with education are the two main reasons that we have so much black poverty.
And here is what is really sad. There are actually some black people who say this. Who speak out on personal responsiblity. Who speak out on getting an education. Who speak out on overcoming racism by working hard. Ya know what those people are called?
Uncle Toms.
Posted by denny at November 13, 2002 09:23 PM