Lyndon B Johnson Once Said…

Lyndon Baines Johnson or LBJ was born on August 27, 1908 and died on January 22, 1973 and was married to Lady Bird Johnson. Lyndon was an American politician who served as 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963 under John F. Kennedy. On November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was inaugurated as the 36th President of the United States until 1969.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose. – Lyndon B. Johnson

We cannot live with regret and it is not as if we can go back and do anything about anything that has happened in the past. No matter how much we would like to so we need to keep our focus on what is possible. We have to appreciate every day and to make it ours.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. Lyndon B Johnson

I love this quote from Johnson regarding the emancipation proclamation. I feel in many ways it still is an issue today…. justice has not been blind to color, nor have we been educated properly regarding race and opportunity needs not to look at skin tone… still. When will we make these changes? We do not have full emancipation, sure it has been proclaimed but it is not a fact but it should be.

Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper – in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children. – Lyndon B. Johnson

I fear that is something that we’re also seeing now. Fact is the corona virus has made it so many places of employment have had to shut their doors, have reduced hours and there are other things that are in place that are wreaking havoc on America. The Department of Labor and Family Services and Cares Act made it so people who don’t normally receive unemployment can get a bit of refuge during this unprecedented time but the system is far from perfect. It didn’t exist before and since it’s started there is miscommunication, misinformation and I think a bit of a rush because they wanted to be able to help people but the way they started the (PUA) Pandemic Unemployment Assistance wasn’t done properly. Many people that work for the PUA have had little training regarding how to handle customer situations, almost all of the processes whether it’s adjudication or appeals have no time frame and there are things such as fraud which have derailed the system and suspended many people from legitimately receiving benefits. The system should be set in place as such, you decide to apply to UI or PUA (you’re not automatically put in), they immediately verify your pertinent information for your identity and then when verified you start receiving benefits. Otherwise it’s a big clusterfuck. People get pissed off because they want or need to apply to PUA but UI won’t stop their claim so that they can make a claim on the PUA side. The process to which they do things isn’t user friendly, isn’t Macintosh friendly, isn’t Firefox friendly, isn’t friendly to people who only have a phone or tablet. Many libraries are still closed and many places are still doing social distancing so reaching out to a friend or family to use their computer may not be an option. I get this is the government and I think sometimes in many ways the government does things just to see how much frustration someone can take before they just give the fuck up. And then they wonder why crime is up and other things are happening. Seriously…. look around and listen and try to straighten shit out and stop dilly dallying about if you’re going to help. There are some people who are in serious need of help and there is a lot of fraud out there. This needs to be fixed yesterday.