Money Trumps Health: Why I Won’t Accept Trump as President

Before you decide to skip reading this entirely, just know, I get it. You’re sick of the politically related posts on here. Probably half the articles and stories that have been coming out for the last week have been around our disaster of an election that we had. It’s either about why we hate Trump, or why we need to give him a chance. I’ve been trying real hard to get back into my normal groove of writing personal stories, but given the current state of our country, my personal stance of how it impacts many, and what’s to come, I find it difficult to waste the power of my penmanship and voice writing about heartbreaks and relationships, when I could be using them to make a more impactful statement.

If you knew me in person, you’d know that I’m not one to share my issues with just anybody, both past and present. If I share with you, you’ve earned my trust, which takes a hell of a lot to do. But sometimes, I just can’t pick up the phone and call my friends. I prefer to struggle quietly until I find a way out, or until I’m ready to talk about it, which could take long or possibly never come. That’s where the beauty of writing comes to play. You write down everything you want to say freely but can’t, you create a blog in the wonderful worldwide web, you write under a pseudonym so your judgmental ass family and friends don’t know it’s you, then publish the shit out of everything so you can just move on with your life.

So here I am, moving on.

Yeah, I’m going to be writing about my anger towards Trump, and I probably will write about it again, because this time I’m only focusing on one area: taxes.

Why, you say? Well, I’m glad you asked, avid reader. Let me give you a bit of a background story so you understand how the last couple of weeks have gone up until tonight.

I come from a Lebanese Muslim family. My parents divorced when I was 12, and at 16 I moved in with my dad. When he got remarried, I moved out under the condition of my mom living with me. My younger brother became part of the package. So, for the last 7 years, I’ve been financially responsible for both my mother and my brother. My mom doesn’t work because she and I made a deal that so long as she takes care of the house, I wouldn’t need her to work. Her health also has deteriorated over the years drastically. We have several hospital visits and scheduled (mostly minor) surgeries that need to get done throughout the year, and so her working would not be wise. As for my brother, I take fault in the fact that I have allowed my parents to turn me into this robot-like daughter that needs to constantly prove herself that she is worthy of their love, blessing and acceptance by going out of my ways and means to do things just for the sake of their happiness (I feel like Haley Joel Osmond in AI, but without the creepy killer factor). My brother works a minimum wage job, and does not pay for any expenses in the house. So, yeah. I basically take care of two other people with my income.

For several years, I’ve racked up thousands of dollars of debt to keep us afloat. I’ve worked 2–3 jobs at a time for a while. I dropped out of college when I was a 4.2 GPA student, who also graduated high school with honors. There’s also a large possibility that I would not be alive right now had I not gotten the psychological help I needed for a while. But hey, you can’t give up on family, right?

WRONG! But I’ll get to that another time.

Anyway, for the last two years, I have been blessedly eligible for Medi-Cal under Obamacare. My income was much less two years ago, and I got promoted in November of 2014. My income got a nice boost even though it was still not enough for three people, but unfortunately last year for my tax filing, I was not eligible to file my brother with me as a dependent. Why? Because anyone who makes over $4,000 of income needs to file taxes separately when they’re over the age of 25. So, while my brother lives rent free and reaps the benefits of not having to pay bills, I also have to suffer the pains of not getting a tax break while paying for his ass. #ThanksUncleSam.

Cool. Now, we fast forward to present day. The country is a mess during election season. The government systems are even worse. You can’t reach anyone at DPSS (Department of Social Services) for the life of you to see what the fuck is going on with your annual insurance eligibility that you’ve sent paperwork for three fucking times, which ends up being cancelled, because it’s MY fault the Goddamn assigned worker doesn’t scan anything in the system, and because fuck you low-class human beings of America for thinking your health means shit to us. To add the cherry on top of the 5 cherries on this diabetes inducing ice cream sundae, my mom now has a new lump in her breast that is growing and causing her pain, and we can’t schedule a biopsy and a mammogram because the insurance is being redetermined.

Have I talked about this to anyone? Yes. One person. One more than what I am currently comfortable with, but I’m trying this thing where I try to share something with just one person I would trust most with my worries and thoughts just so I don’t go batshit crazy. And yet, I was fine when I talked about it. It’s not like this is the first cancer scare we have for my mom. It’s something I expected. It’s something I mentally prepared myself for since the last scare. See, my mom’s oldest sister died from cancer 3 years ago. She had gone into remission twice, and then that motherfucker showed up again like the Death Star in Empire Strikes Back, hit the bone, and it was only a matter of time. After finding cancerous bags in my mom’s cervix two times, we made sure we kept the Pap smear tests coming every 4–6 months. Whodathunk it would show up elsewhere? Duh! Cancer did! So, I was mentally ready. What I wasn’t mentally ready for was the call I received today.

A file reviewer called me at 5:10 pm from the DPSS. I had asked that while our file be reviewed after wreaking havoc at their office in Pasadena, they need to put my mom on the ER list in case I needed to admit her, you know, considering. Today, I find out that the redetermination process had begun, and just by looking at my reported income, my mother and I were not eligible for insurance. I explained to them my situation, how I did not care if I was ineligible so long as she had it, and how I am also financially responsible for my brother. Here’s the response I received: “Even though you are financially responsible for your brother, you do not file taxes for him. I understand that his age is a prime factor of why he cannot file with you, but his income, though unreasonable for any person to live off of, needs to be reported separately. Effectively, your income is higher than what we require to be eligible. If unless you make less than $1,600 a month, we will be declining your redetermination.”

This is how I heard it: “Look, we don’t give a rat’s ass that our government rules don’t make any sense. Yeah, your brother makes jack shit for him to live off of, but we want our damn tax dollars, and we get more if we make him file as independent. You know how we also get more money? By putting people like you who can barely get by in horrible ass situations like this so we can take more of your taxes, and inevitably say hey, you make more money, therefore let’s also make you pay for insurance you can’t afford because we made a deal with the lobbyists from insurance companies that we’d make people like you pay, we get paid too! If by any chance you make an amount that would only cover your rent and $200 in groceries, which is fucking impossible for even one person to live off of, we will have ZERO tolerance for treating you like a human being who deserves not only a roof over your head, but also health insurance to keep your mom alive as she so rightfully deserves to be. So yeah, pay up, lower middle-class bitch!”

Here’s how this is related to Trump’s taxes: This racist, sexist, lying, sniveling, small-handed, orange-headed cockroach of a man has been avoiding paying taxes for the last twenty years as he sits on hundreds of millions of dollars (I mean, come on. He is even saying living in the White House is “downsizing” for him), but I, a hard-working, sweat-running, stress-jerking, honest-living woman gets fucked in the pockets by him and people like him. Yeah, it’s not just Trump. I know the 1% basically do something of the sort to avoid paying taxes, or pay a much less amount than what they should be. They get away with it because of power and promises and schemes to keep this country and its people under control so they continue living selfishly lavish lives. That goes without saying “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

And what did America do? They put the very issue-facing example of a man who has swindled money out of our pockets into office, to run our country under the promise that WE, the lower class, will be paying less taxes with his plan. Sorry, Drumpf, but I would never take the word of a man who has lived doing the exact opposite of that his entire life. Actually, no. I’m not sorry, because really, you should be apologizing to ME. You say America is not great. You say we are not where we need to be. But here’s the rub. You and the people who voted for you are the very reason why this country has not fixed its financial issues. You and the people who voted for you are the reason why they won’t be fixed for the next four years to come. You and the people who voted for you are so incredibly selfish, that you would not give a rat’s ass about how lower class people live so long as a “white male conservative” is in power, because fuck the little people if it means having a fraudulent penis in office rather than a fair-playing vagina.

So long as a person like you is accepted, so long as a person like you gets to run our country and its people — a person who steals from the poor, threatens minorities, evades taxes, takes away women’s rights to their bodies, condemns Obamacare, promotes violence, and lies out of his ass about anything good or truthful about this country or its people, I will not fucking accept you. I will not give you a chance, because you had not only 70 years of chances, you had an extremely crucial last 18 months of chances to prove yourself worthy of respect of a position in the White House, and respect of the good people of this country. You, Donald J. Trump, and the people like you who have money or otherwise, are the reason why I, my close friends and many others out there are in this fucking predicament, and I will never let a breath of my life be wasted on second guessing your cruel intentions to be anything otherwise. In fact, I condemn the hell out of you, and I hope to see you and the likes of you gone and wiped out from our politics, government and jacked up system.

Until then, keep taking my hard-earned tax dollars, but I sure do hope you choke on every one of them.