At Nature’s Great Table: There are no plates for some

By Eddie Griffin

Am I the only man to openly declare that my constituency consists of the “poorest of the poor”? I am poor by choice of sacrifice. My two-story home was foreclosed upon because of my prolong stay in the VA hospital. I lived with the homeless and choose a life of poverty, living and breathing with the poorest of the poor.

My affections are upon “the least of these”, the children of the poorest of the poor, especially my grandchildren who receives nearly all my pension. Their mother, who is white, must rely on food stamps and charity. Their father, my son, is chronically under-employed and frequently unemployed and cannot afford to support five kids and a new baby by another marriage.

There are children in worse conditions, whose fathers are in prison, and the mother uses up all the food stamps to get crack. Some see it as a life of ease and too much mercy. But I have been there to see that it is a death wish, people wanting to be taken out of their misery. From the overdose on narcotics to the suicide-by-cop shootout with cops, it is a death wish being acted out.

My conversation to politicians and leaders is as one who represents the poorest of the poor. I cannot be refuted because we have nothing to lose. Therefore, I take no backtalk.

Consideration for the Poor

The poor you will have with you always, Jesus said.

I have read it over and over and it seemed so depressing to realize that, no matter how hard I fight, poverty will never go away… so said the bible. The idea burst my little bubble of idealism of some day living in a poverty-free society. What I missed in my early ready was this: Jesus also said. “Whenever you will, you can do them good.”

But Thomas Malthus said, “At nature’s great table, there are no plates for some.” Now I know why the old folks used the expression: “Ole Tom Devil”. Malthus was a man who believed so much in population control that he would commit genocide and mass sterilization against the poor, and put malaria in the drinking water of Africans.

Those for whom there are no plates are the poorest of the poor, and those without a voice, especially for children conceived in hope but born into despair.

Where there is no hope, there is no salvation and no savior. Faith then comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

TOM FOOLERY

Ole Tom Devil is one of those hushed about folklore characters often spoken African and African-American secrecy.

The Old Folks said: Ole Tom Devil gave us syphilis and mutilated our girls, so they could have sex with them without bearing half-white children. They injected our men with syphilis in the Tuskegee experiment. But they did not control the victims’ sexual promiscuity, nor cautioned against it. Therefore, we have a slough of black children with sexually transmitted defects and mental diseases.

Thomas Malthus should have been a villain in history, but today he is respectfully known as the Father of Planned Parenthood and the Birth Control movement.

At nature’s great table, there are no plates for some.

I recall the last two years of my 12-year imprisonment at Leavenworth. It was funny that the warden gave me the privacy and respect of a Mafia don. They filled the prison to capacity, 8-men per cell. But there were only two of us in cell A123.

The warden somewhat reserved other six bunk beds for newcomers. This provided me the opportunity to show the “new fish” the ropes and break them in.

On one occasion, they sent me a kid, fresh off the street, still smelling like cologne, and disrespectful to his elders.

He came into our cell, plopped down on an empty bunk like his whole little world had come to an end.

“Who said that you could sleep there?” I asked him.

“The warden,” he replied tartly.

So, I rolled up the kid’s bunk and threw it out on the tier, and told the kid to tell the warden to put him somewhere else.

And so, it was my job in prison to break juvenile delinquents of their criminal behavior and thinking. As the rule goes, Thou shalt respect thy neighbor and thou shalt not steal his commissary. You can get killed up in here.

I can put you in a comma for a day, a week, a month, or have you on life support for a year. My favorite bluff:

DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT

Today, I teach a school class for teenage boys, as often time I teach the adult class. I tell my boys: Don’t even think about it, when it comes to evil temptations. They don’t know Ole Tom Devil like I do.

But I cannot teach from aloft. I have made too many mistakes in life for that. When I shoot from the hip, it is at point-blank range. I do not hide behind a facade of false pretensions. Kids can see through that.

I use shock value sometime to get their attention. And I have enough unique experiences to tell.

I am one of the last old time Black Panther outlaw, a banker robber and commando. I was taken down by one of the most famous Texas Rangers in history, Tom Arnold, who, with a machine gun to my head, spared my life. Therefore, Eddie Griffin am an anomaly and a freak to have survived near-death experiences, from an adventurous and riotous life.

I have seen scenes like no man has seen. I saw blood on the floor in prison, a man’s throats cut from ear-to-ear, another stabbed with barber scissors in the jugular and blood skeet up to the ceiling, and a man’s stomach cut open like a can of beans and not dropping a drop of blood as he walked to the prison infirmary, a man stabbed in the back and the blade going all the way through his body and out the other side.

I have seen a man fake his own death and escape from the morgue, a helicopter escape attempt from the prison yard, a mass escape from the most maximum security prison, and hand-to-hand combat that brought me close to death.

I can tell these stories first hand in vivid details. It leaves some of my kids gasping and covering their eyes. They cannot bear to see it, not even through my eyes as I describe it.

Then I teach: There is only one Race, the Human Race, but two different spirits. Don’t confuse the two.

At nature’s great table, there are no plates for some. What kind of spirit said that?

A Prolonged Economic Crisis

Dear Congressman Burgess:

We could not have prevented the passage of a bailout plan and the market meltdown that followed.

People are losing their homes, and now their retirement funds and life’s savings are being gobbled up. (Have mercy on the man when it cost as much to drive back and forth to work as a man makes in a day). Who’s going to bail us out?

I inquired about the sanctity and solvency of our employee retirement funds, put at risk through no fault of the employee. Who eats this loss?

Do our employees understand that their retirement accounts are going up in smoke while they wait for their third quarter retirement earning statement? Everybody else is bailing out. (See “Legislators may be asked to address Texas pension fund losses” by Yamil Berard, Star-Telegram)

The stock portfolios of some of the state’s largest investments funds — supporting government employees’ retirements and public education — have taken quite a beating this year. By summer, the value of some of the funds had dropped by billions of dollars…

Many funds also had significant stakes in some of Wall Street’s highest rollers that went bust. Some even increased their exposure by buying more shares early this year as the stock of those companies was plunging.

None of the funds have yet to make public their third-quarter rates of return, which would give the most up-to-date look at losses. But by the end of the second quarter on June 30 — before the markets rapidly deteriorated, former Wall Street powerhouses like Lehman Bros. failed and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were taken over — all the funds saw significant erosion of their portfolios.

Status of Employee Retirement Fund Inquiry

City of Fort Worth
1000 Throckmorton St.
Fort Worth, TX 76102

City Manager Dale A. Fisseler

Re: Status of Employee Retirement Fund

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Dear Dale:

In light of the recent developments in the financial markets, I am compelled to ask questions that relate to our city’s solvency. And before writing Congressman Michael Burgess again about voting for the next bailout bill, I would need to know something about our economic condition.

I have included Asst. City Manager Fernando Costa, another man of integrity much like you, who is not afraid of the tough questions. Also, I have included Human Resource Department Director, Karen Marshall, who might provide some insight into how many employees may be at risk due to the city’s retirement investment in troubled financial accounts.

1. How is the City’s “retirement fund” performing at this time?

2. How close are we to resolving the under-funding issue we had before the current Stock Market crisis? Did the current crisis exacerbate the problem on retirement liquidity?

On a personal note, how is your own 401(k) retirement fund performing? Would you recommend putting retirement institutional funds in the current market?

By the way, who is managing our city employee retirement fund? Into what fund is it located?

These questions come to mind as we look at this so-called bailout bill in Washington.

Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com