So it’s come ‘round again:  JH is stuck with no money, no income, and no chance of getting either via any traditional method.

I hate doing this, this asking for money crap.  It makes me feel like a panhandling bum trying to scam crack money.

Unfortunately, the reality is I’ve never at any time in my life been able to live comfortably.  The vast majority of my life has been spent in borrowed living – friends and family who open their homes to me for short periods, or sleeping in my car or elsewhere on the streets.  I’ve only avoided sleeping at drop-in centers and missions by virtue of not wanting to have the few possessions I own stolen from me.

I’m not a junkie.  I’m not a bum.  I’m not a scam artist.  Heck, if I was a scam artist I’d just wrap myself in a bible and flag and then making money would be easy.  Unfortunately, I have a sense of integrity and ethics – unlike the vast majority of people who make money thumping the bible and the flag – that precludes me from manipulating friends and strangers.

I want to earn your help.  I believe I *am* earning your help.  By spending my time staying aware of the current events and world issues that confront us, using the gifts I was given at birth to strip away the media-generated bullshit that surrounds them and present you with the objective reality as I see it – and yes, that reality often has a bias – I fulfill my purpose as a human being.

After all, for what other possible reason could a human being be given the combination of gifts I was blessed (and cursed) with?  The gifted child routine (in case you’ve not bothered reading the ‘About Me’ section of this site, the whole “genius” thing isn’t a joke – I passed my SATs at age 12, in 7th grade, 1983, with a 650 math and 710 verbal score.  At the time that put me in the top 1/2 of 1% of test scores in the country…as measured against high school seniors), the inability to keep my mouth shut when convention and saccharine decorum suggest that I should, my dogged refusal to abandon principle when it becomes inconvenient to adhere, even the way I look…all of these things create a package with a purpose, and that purpose is to do what our “leaders” of religion, politics, and industry can’t:

Bring some sense and objective truth to our national and global socio-political discourse.  Point out and clarify the lies and manipulations of the mass media, big business, political parties, war profiteers, and their ilk, and do it in a way that doesn’t flinch from calling us all out on our failures (and yes that includes my own!), without worrying about losing sponsors or market share.

I am the embodiment of 21st-century journalism and media. 

I am the legitimate grass roots that other outlets from Drudge to Huffington have prefabricated, thrown tons of money at, and thereby made themselves authorities.

And I need your help.  I don’t just need your help, I need MONEY.  Lots of it, by my own measure – damn little of it by yours.  Heck, I’ve got friends (or people I thought were my friends, back in ‘the day,’) who make enough in ONE NIGHT to ensure that I need never worry about money again.

I’m not expecting some lottery-style windfall here.  I’m just trying to get over to the point that I have an audience outside of my friends, because as much as I love my friends there are billions of people who need to know the things I have learned in this life, from spotting media bias in either direction (and understanding that all bias is not created equal), to understanding some facets of the truths that lie behind the various religions, to holding our leaders in business, industry, and politics accountable for their words and deeds.  Understanding that not everything that has a flag on it is patriotic, and not everything that has a cross on it is holy.

Teaching us to be who we are, to choose love, and to think first, and why none of those three things is worth much without the other two.

I don’t know what to call myself.  Comedian?  Would be nice, but usually the things I get worked up enough to write and/or record a rant about aren’t very funny.  Philosopher?  Seems awfully arrogant, doesn’t it.  But then it seems awfully arrogant to believe that anything I’d have to say is worth hearing, too.

In spite of my generally abysmal self-esteem (not to be confused with a lack of confidence in my beliefs and principles – my beliefs are fine, it’s ME that’s screwy), I still manage to believe that.

If the feedback I’ve had over the years is to be taken sincerely, so do many of the people who hear what I have to say.

But right now, here’s the reality:

I’ve got no health insurance and several nagging issues that I can’t even identify, including what feels like incipient tonsillitis as I write this, a back injury due to an auto accident that I’ve been unable to find any mechanism of compensation for, and a dental situation that is not only beyond embarrassing but that’s causing other health problems. 

I don’t even own a decent pair of shoes anymore. 

The last time I bought any kind of new clothing was years ago. 

My vehicle is getting closer to collapse every day, and even if it weren’t I’m going to have to stop driving it in another few days because I can’t afford the insurance on it. 

My one telephone, a ghetto Boost, is going to be shut off in a few days because I don’t have the fifty bucks to re-up for a month, which means I will no longer be getting calls from taxi customers, and even if I was it’s a 50-50 at this point whether I’d be able to put together enough gas to go pick them up. 

The video card in my computer was recalled but I can’t afford to stake the $65 deposit for a replacement BEFORE I send the defective card back, and I can’t afford to be without my computer for weeks while I want for the replacement to be sent AFTER I send the defective card back.

I’m currently relying on the largesse of a near-stranger just to have a place to stay, and who knows how long that will last?

The bill for this website is due and I have no way to pay it.

And yet, James Maddix of Big Daddy Taxi in Kalamazoo still insists that his inability to maintain his vehicles, his refusal to adequately market his brand, and his willingness to emotionally manipulate my good will and friendship into working 48 to 90 hour weeks driving his cars for far less than minimum wage constitutes an equitable return on my investment of time and energy into his company.  And James, obnoxious coward that he is, is only the latest in a long, LONG line of people who have treated me the same way over the years:  use me as long as you can, and when I become inconvenient or ask to be properly compensated or stop telling them what they want to hear all day every day, I get thrown under a damn bus and left to die bleeding on the streets.

In at least a couple of cases, I mean that literally.

All my life I’ve been surrounded and exploited by people who want to use my talent, intellect, energy, and power for their own ends and profit, and what I’ve had in return time and time again is abandonment, betrayal, scapegoating, and blame-laying.  When things I do make money for people, then those people proclaim themselves successful.  When I start asking to be paid enough for my time and effort to even live on – and we’re not talking about a lot of money here, I’m single and have almost no financial obligations – then those people proclaims me “the problem” and leave me out in the cold to live or die “on my own.”

Then those same people – and Maddix is a great example of this – look down their nose at me for being a broke-ass.  They claim I don’t “appreciate” the “opportunities” they’re “offering” me.

I’m sorry, but the opportunity to play prison bitch for the profit and ego of incompetent morons is not an offer I’m able to appreciate.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.  I think there are millions of us working for greedy, incompetent jerks who wish we didn’t have to.  I think there are millions of YOU out there who wish you could take the chances I’ve taken with my life in terms of being willing to stand on principle, in terms of being willing to say that while I might need an income to survive, I am not for sale at any price.

So now I’m coming to you and I’m saying:

I have played the game, and the game has failed me.

I have struck out on my own in that most noble of all uniquely American aspirations – the desire and determination to fulfill my potential as a human being on my own terms – and in spite of the difficult position I’ve been in these last few years (and off and on my entire life), I still believe that here in the US a person CAN survive – not just survive but succeed – by a combination of relentless integrity and unyielding commitment to (yes, I’m going to say it) truth, justice, and the American way.

But I can’t print money.

My conservative friends (an enemies!) have for years insisted that social welfare programs are unnecessary and that in a free market people will automatically choose to support those things that are worth supporting.

I’m worth supporting, and now I’m asking those conservative friends and everyone else to put their money where their mouth is and support something worth supporting.

In return, I make only the promise that I will be who I am, I will choose love, and I will think first.  I don’t promise to tell anyone what they want to hear.  I certainly don’t promise to change my tune or abandon my principles in order to appease someone who gives me money.

Survival of course, first and foremost, but beyond that:  improving my equipment from my camera to my computer.  Creating a living situation in which I can continue to do what I do best – think about things more completely than most people can and express those thoughts in ways that enable those who weren’t born with my intellectual gifts to still make informed and intelligent decisions based not on fear and hand-wringing and partisan agitation but on reality, truth, and fundamental common decency.

I need shoes.  I need suspension and brake work on my vehicle (or alternately to sell the vehicle and get a better one).  Eventually I’d like to get myself in a drum set again as well as other instruments, if for nothing else than to create entertaining little intro/outro riffs for these videos.  That, of course, also requires recording equipment and time.  I need travel money so that I can expand the context of my videos – I would love nothing more than to be able to just drive around the country for a month at a time, seeing and recording and observing and commenting on the things that I can only experience via television or internet right now, and bring those things to you in ways that commercial interests and for-profit broadcasters simply can’t.

I need clothing and tires and a place to live that I can actually call my own even if it’s just a rental.  I need the space and time and lack of stress over money to allow me to focus on creating more important things, including that book I promised to write.

Top three priorities, other than food:  web hosting bill, car insurance, telephone bill.  Those amount to roughly $200 a month.  That’s before I eat, before I pay rent on anything, before I buy blank videotapes (the half-dozen tapes I have now have been recycled so often I’m afraid they’ll stop working soon), before I do ANYTHING else.

Right now, I’m using coffee filters for bathroom tissue.  Why?  Because I’ve got filters, but I’ve got no tissue.

That’s where my life is right now.  It’s embarrassing and humiliating and yes I’m fully aware that there are choices I’ve made in life that ultimately put me where I am now. With all due respect, that doesn’t mean jack at this point in time.  I can’t go back and change those things, I can’t go back and un-make those decisions…and every time I’ve tried, it’s ended up being at best a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

What am I asking for?

Well, obviously the big pipe dream is for someone with a whole bunch of extra cash to drop it on me and go “Okay, JH, you go be JH and we’ll sit back and watch.”  I don’t think that’s going to happen.  But what could happen is a whole lot of people could donate a few bucks.  Heck, if everyone in the US gave me one cent I’d have almost four million dollars.  Maybe you don’t have any cash to spare…but I bet you’ve got some friends.  I bet you know someone who’d either enjoy or hate what I’ve got to say – either way they’ll feel strongly about it – and if you tell them about me and they come see my site or my videos or whatever, and then they tell their friends, the whole thing snowballs, I go viral, and maybe I can actually start bringing this wisdom and sagacity that people keep telling me I have to a wider audience.

Hell, maybe if we work together – by which I mean I do all the work and You The People help keep me alive and able to do so with your contributions – I can actually get enough people paying attention to make a difference.  Wouldn’t it be cool if I got over enough to start saying the things I say on…oh, say the Daily Show, or Morning Joe, or even O’Reilly?

I think it would.  I know some of you think it would.

I believe in you.

Now I need you to believe in me.

Contributions made via PayPal are not exposed to me in any way in terms of allowing me to see or use your financial information, credit card number, or anything else.  All I know is your name, how much you’ve contributed, and whatever information YOU DECIDE to give me, and unless someone asks me to do otherwise I won’t be making even that much information public.  Your identity and financial information is at no more risk by contributing to me than it would be buying a comic book on E-bay.  In reality, there’s always a bit of risk, and 99.99998% of that risk is in YOUR hands – making sure you have proper malware protection and firewall, making sure you don’t give you personal information to unreliable or irreputable sources.  That’s why I use PayPal – it’s as safe as it can possibly get.

You’ll note that there are two links – one says “microdonate” and the other says “donate.”  The “microdonate” is for contributions under six dollars US.  This is a special small-payment system set up by PayPal to allow for smaller transactions without prohibitively expensive processing fees.  Because of the way it’s set up, six dollars is the closest round dollar to the point where it costs more to process through that system than through the “normal” PayPal transaction system.

And that, I suppose, is that.  Please feel free to ask if you have any questions; the comment form is below.