The definition of cruelty: offering a childcare subsidy so parents can afford to go to work.  Then place applicants  on a 6 month waiting list. Thanks for giving me some hope that I might actually get to a catching up place and then throwing that pipe dream over a cliff.

I want to work. I can work. I started my own business and even got a job with an organization I respect and have passion for. But I can't afford childcare. Boot straps? I've been making my own damn bootstraps. But they keep unraveling. I'm frustrated and I'm angry. I vote. I participate in the economy and our so called democracy. I abide by our laws and pay my taxes. I am told by privileged pundits that I am some how responsible for this situation . WTF? These are Atwood's, Orwell's and Kafka's nightmares only I'm living it. And it's taking a great deal of meditation and compassion to not go all Dostoyevski on some one.

One of the battle cries of the conservative movement is that lefties are destroying the family and old fashioned morality when what you've described is the sort of small town, or village like atmosphere that's been destroyed by corporate greed. The idea that wealth equals stuff and so we move for the work, lose our roots and ties to family. Ironically, the very pundits that fault lefty queer commies like me for destroying the sanctity of marriage and the family are the very ones who rely on that destruction to sustain their disproportionate wealth. We are corporate-centered, not human-centered anymore. It's really bad. And getting worse, not better.  We don't live in in towns and cities any more with names like Pittsburgh or Massapequa or Passamoquody. We live in virtual cities called Highmark, UPMC, Hewlett Packard, Exxon, Beatrice, Monsanto....etc.  Let's not forget PNC, Bank of NY, Citigroup, .....a conspiracy theorist might conclude that this frustration is to beat folk in my position into taking a minimum wage job in one of these towns. Just eat the soilent green, drink the koolaid and all my troubles will be resolved. See? That wasn't so bad. except now I owe my soul to the company store.