ETS! welcomes letters, comments, and feedback from readers. We print as many as we can and prefer to edit as little as possible, but we do have severe space limits. Please be concise to help us include more voices. Write us at Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145 (USA); e-mail ets@scn.org.

A Shameless Plea for Free Publicity

ETS!,

Hands Off Washington has filed Initiative 677, the Employment NonDiscrimination Act of Washington, prohibiting employment discrimination based on real or perceived queerness. We need 180,000 valid signatures of Washington State citizens by July 3, and then plenty of support for a "Yes" vote in November.

Information and petitions are available at (206) 323-5191, or via HandsOffWA@aol.com.

Since the Legislature won't consider protecting its queer constituents, or even consider a stop to baiting them with bogus "marriage" demagoguery, it's time we the oft-forgotten people make our laws directly.

Keep up the fine cooking. Think of it as the information soup kitchen for the factually starved.

Straight (But Not Narrow), Patrick McArdle, Seattle

P.S. My one teeny complaint about your journal is the name-calling, i.e. "Republislugs." If you've ever listened to KVI, you know that we'll never beat them at their game of yelling schoolyard inanities. If we really want to insult, say, the Republicans, all we need to do is quote their party platform, or list, as you have so well done, their pathetic and dangerous attempts at legislation.

Ya Basta!

ETS!:

A Spanish-speaking prisoner in Monroe, who watches Mexican TV on cable, told me that they carry nightly interviews with Nestor Cerpa in which he says, among other things, that the MRTA wants to lay down arms and become a legitimate political party after their members are released.

It is interesting that I have not read this once in any U.S. coverage of the Lima occupation.

Just another mediawatch observation...

Dan Tenenbaum, Seattle

Ed. note: The rebel occupation of the Japanese Embassy in Peru has gotten horribly biased U.S. media coverage. For some very different perspectives, Internet- minded folks can start with the Voz Rebelde web site (photos and video clips, too) at: http://burn.ucsd.edu/%7Eats/mrta.htm

When is Welfare Actually Corporate Welfare?

ETS:

If you'd told me three years ago that today I'd be working as a temporary, receiving reduced premium health insurance, food stamps, energy or food bank assistance, and living in low income subsidized housing, I would've said "no way."

"Who, me? College graduate on the Dean's List, hard worker all his life, and son of successful middle class parents. There's no way an economic change could affect me," I would've replied.

Yet after faxing 534 resumes in the last three months and receiving no offers, I reluctantly accepted a temporary part-time administrative assistant position at $9.80 an hour for 15-20 hours a week to be responsible and pay my rent, student loans, etc. The client-employer pays $16.10 an hour for my skills.

But that's the problem. The money I make ($700-800/month before taxes) is barely enough to live on. Thus, I now qualify to pay $10 a month for health insurance (remainder of my bill, $136, is paid by the "state"), food stamps ($55- 120), energy assistance ($10), food bank ($20-50), telephone credit ($5), and subsidized housing (paying $125 instead of $600 for a newer one bedroom apartment).

Of course, none of these "benefits" are paid for by either "employer." No, they're paid for by the rest of us, the taxpayers in the amount of $5,800+ a year.

If I was paid more, say $12-13/hr, I wouldn't be eligible for any "corporate welfare" secondary benefits. And the temp body shop could still earn a profit. So if you're an employer using one of many temporary companies or reducing your worker's hours (to save costs; whose, I might ask?), you might want to ask yourself in a rare moral moment why taxpayers ought to pay for the cheapness of your company.

Because when temp companies and their clients won't pay a living wage or provide enough hours, the rest of us have to make up the economic difference.

--name withheld, Seattle