Study: 744,000 are homeless in U.S.

Scapegoats for the common people, by design:

"We're very concerned about the health and well being of those people being out in the elements," Poppe said. "We had an encampment set on fire, and we had a woman struck by a train."

At least someone is willing to state that homelessness is not reducible to unwillingness to work. Most people who are left homeless either work or are eager to work but are held back for lack of the means of supporting a job (a legal place to get sleep and bath; mailing address and phone access; etc.). It' s mere fabrication to say most of the unhoused are lazy. What is conveniently and suspiciously omitted from public discourse is that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are left without housing simply because wages haven't kept up with rent:

"The driver in homelessness is the affordable housing crisis," Roman said. "If we don't do something to address the crisis in affordable housing we are not going to solve homelessness."

Of course, there are a myriad of solutions that could be applied promptly to make rent more affordable, at only a tiny expense to the wealthy elite if an expense at all in the long run. While it's tragic that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it more convenient to leave large number of "addicts" and "mentally ill" out on the streets, the less apparent tragedy is the pervasive generalization of "addict" or "mental illness." This erroneous label mischaracterizes and stigmatizes the majority of people left on the streets: the ordinary, sane, and sober. As a consequence of this erroneous generalization, hundreds of thousands of ordinary unhoused working families see their prospects and opportunities diminished. To be found-out (as homeless) is risk being denied or terminated from a job, to be presumed an "drunk," "junky," or "nutcase."

As long as the poor can point to and put down someone else, then even they can feel affluent. As long as the poor believe it is their own merit which keeps them afloat, then they put themselves increasingly at risk of dropping down to the lowest rungs and becoming part of the landscape of unhoused. We have large numbers of unhoused and impoverished simply because we are an inhumane society that predicates victory on the display of the sad state of affairs of the defeated. To legitimate the status-quo inhumane model of oppression of the masses, the subtle promise of punishment for non-submission is on constant exhibition. The homeless are scapegoats, examples, spectacles of what could become of anyone. Their exhibition serves to whip the workers into line and into taking no chances. That's why we have such large number of of unhoused. The exhibition of the homeless may even contribute to the stagnation unionizing and other non-compliance mechanisms for challenging wealth and power.

Middle-Income Conservatives Love to Pay More Taxes So the Very Rich Can Get Tax Breaks

Only by design do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

NYT excerpt:

Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study.

The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available, while rates for people at the very top continued to decline.

We don't have to put up with this bullshit!

The Case for Attacking Iran

The current U.S. regime has already demonstrated it's unpredictability. As improbable as most people may consider it, it is striking how close the history being orchestrated for attacking Iran is to that which was orchestrated for invading Iraq. One noticeable difference is that it isn't so sloppy this time. The U.N. is on board, and a branch of the U.S. government has found the government of Iran guilty of terrorism.

Pretext Number One (terrorism), Exhibit A:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Iranian government is partly to blame for a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, a federal judge ruled Friday

This time, Americans won't be taking to the streets, waving flags and screaming for bloody war. People are cautious, after having been thoroughly lied into Iraq. Of course, that doesn't mean the current U.S. dictator won't attack Iran, despite the risks it poses to the global economy. On the other hand, if the U.S. economy were going to collapse anyway, is it possible a new war could help energize and expand the military industrial sector that drives U.S. productivity.

Pretext Two (WMD) is already being hyped by U.N. sanctions. But, didn't Blix recently say he could find no credible evidence that Iran is anywhere near posing a nuclear threat? Two who first contested the U.S. pretext for invading Iraq, Blumenthal and Ritter, seem convinced the Bush regime is about to attack Iran. Could the unthinkable actually happen? There's little comfort in the U.S. and British military build-up aimed at Iran.

Global Energy Crisis Could Be Solved with Mirrors and the Desert Sun

Excerpt:

The outlook is not promising. More than 30 countries last week agreed to spend £7bn on an experimental fusion reactor in France which critics say will not produce any electricity for 50 years, if at all.

That amount of money would provide a lot of CSP power, a proven, working and simple technology that would work now, not in 2056.

Why not?

This should make it plainly obvious that technology alone will not save us. We have the technology, it's cost efficient, but we still reject it. What really needs to be explored is not alternate technology but it's impediments. One major impediment, it will continue to be argued, is an unresponsive and heavily entrenched corporate free-market with the consequence of standardized collective competition across arbitrary market boundaries like nation-states and currencies, for example. Although there are plenty of other reasons for exploring the order of our own species, such as universal liberation through social justice and equity, that's precisely why there is resistance from the dominant power-structure. The power-elite extract and preserve their power and wealth by monopolizing dominion over species order. This monopolization of species order is achieved by use of global state-enforced corporate market economy structured to come at the expense of liberty for the many and at the expense of fulfilling universal preferences for both life-giving and life-quality social constructs instead.

In short, self-centered greedy dumb asses are in control, and very few are forceful in challenging their control!

That's why not!

Asia Times: Global economy faces a dangerous year

A detailed bleak forecast in Asia Times, from Jephraim P Gundzik, president of Condor Advisers, a firm specializing in investment risk analysis.

The United States is Insolvent

Look on the bright side. Maybe this will mean circumstance will force the U.S. to reduce green house emissions.

Some succinct analysis with some startling conclusions:

The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for our national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Our combined federal deficits now total more than 400% of GDP.

That is the conclusion of a recent Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06), deep in the holiday season, with little fanfare.

Read on.

The Draft: Opposing "Benefit!" . . . . . Apologists and Policy Test Runs

It's amazing how Americans repress hypocrisy from consciousness and leave it untagged. The head of the VA, referring to the draft:

"I think that our society would benefit from that, yes sir," Nicholson said.

The secretary recalled his own experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels, noting that the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society together in the common purpose of serving."

He later issued a statement saying his comments had been misconstrued and that he does not support bringing back the draft.

People will offer token opposition to the unpopular ideas they believe-in only until it's no longer expected that they to do so. As the unpopular idea starts to take root and a growing number of people express a will for it, expect such token opposition to be dropped. It would seem most people already have good reasons for it, it's just that the taboo aspect still requires the benefits of a draft be qualified. Even amid qualifications: the conservative might argue a draft would be more economically feasible than massive money spent on PR and advertising to recruit a volunteer military; the liberal might argue against the civil injustice of disproportionally targeting military recruitment at minorities; the leftest might argue that a draft would provide the benefit of increased discontent within the ranks of the military and on college campuses.

The near total absence of dissent among U.S. youth and on college campuses leaves conditions better for spreading the idea of a draft and hastens the day when qualification is no longer needed. Although the taboo could implode with the successful re-orientation of public perception to a new threat, the growth in public suspicion of government-endorsed threats/pretexts means the public threshold for belief is increasingly elevated. With annual rates as high as, or higher than, one half-million Iraqi refugees and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's murdered, it appears as if the U.S. considers a policy of waiting through a genocide more manageable than a draft. As the test run on genocide draws criticism, it would be hard to imagine it mere coincidence that another test run finally emerges.

Concentration Camps for Immigrant Children Victimized by Swift Raids and Beyond

A very bad precedent threatens everyone's rights and liberty.

Privatization of Prisons puts profit over rights:

It means that at the Taylor facility of the 400 people "held" there, 200 are children. And all are families that can be held there for whatever length of time without due process conducted in a timely manner.

To top it off, as long as the men, women and children are held there, the facility's operator draws a daily profit - per person.

And of course, a corporate prison must honor the stock holders by cutting costs:

Lawyers are reporting that families are receiving substandard medical care and becoming ill from the food being served them. Children are losing weight and people are complaining of migraine-type headaches.

Since it drives up costs to avoid it, child neglect and abuse can be expected:

For children to be held longer than three days, receive but one hour of instruction and only a half hour of recreational play, to be made to feel like criminals by wearing jail jumpsuits and name tags and not have any contact with anyone outside of the facility is a serious violation of the public trust we have in our government, and how we value children in this country.

Will the "national supremacy" argument collapse into the emancipation of non-U.S. citizens? Or will it collapse into the violation of everyone's rights--a new norm? The trend seems toward the later. In one of the latest of known cases of U.S. citizens being disappeared for 96 days, the U.S. government subjected an innocent U.S. citizen to the same rights violations: indefinite detention, neglect, humiliating and degrading treatment, no access to court or lawyer. That some would dismiss this line of reasoning as "conspiracy theory" attest to terrible trend's will to repress its opposition.

Update: A FOX commentator is now arguing in favor of detention camps for U.S. jounralists who merely express dissent.

US economic growth revised downward

What's the motive? Market deception?

Geographical History of Empire in the Middle East

Via Daily Kos, an animated Flash map of the history of empire the Middle East.

Solutions: Civic Participation Creates a Car-Free Green City in Germany

This is not a primitive city, but a modern one with abundant advanced high-tech jobs. Excerpt:

As a result, the car-ownership rate in Vauban is only 150 per 1,000 inhabitants, . . .

In contrast, the US average is 640 household vehicles per 1,000 residents.

Bush's Conception of the Calling

Today, in response to a reporter's query about Bush's personal feelings toward his failed imperialist venture in Iraq, the U.S. dictator replied with the phrase "our calling." When I heard him use that phrase, I started reeling in memories of Max Weber's account of "Luther's Conception of the Calling" in his famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The occidental notion of calling serves as an order from God that demands obedience. Access both to heaven and abundance on earth is contingent on compliance. The order of the "calling" becomes moral imperative, divine destiny. It is imposed as irreversible and closed to debate.

Though the notion of divine destiny had long been used to legitimize monarchical states, in Martin Luther's day the term "calling" came to have more to do with the christian god calling "man" to a trade, profession, or to the ministry. Over time, usage of the term "calling" faded to little more than a ghost lingering mainly in the deep south and heartland. Bush, however, seeks to revive the ghost and move society backwards by hundreds of years. Resurrecting monarchical in the form of dictatorship, he extends usage vastly beyond the relation between god and an individual man's labor. He substitutes "nation state" for the individual. The relation is then between god and the nation state.

The next substitution is more subtle. As if monarch or pope, Bush appoints himself as sole agent of god's divine will. He poses as the only one with the correct interpretation. As "Bush's orders" are substituted for "god's destiny," the source of the orders is cleverly re-attributed to the god. Nevermind that he openly states that his god talks to him. That's likely part of the packaged deceit. What anyone should plainly observe is that he veils his own orders with the cloak of god. In Bush's world, his orders are made to appear to derive from the christ god who calls a nation-state to a non-negotiable destiny of warfare to rid the world of evil--to rid the world of that perpetual shifting nuisance, the other which must be defeated, brought into submission, or eliminated.

Compelled to look into Bush's use of the phrase, I did the following google search: Bush "our calling." Not only did I discover that he uses the word generously to deploy his agenda (in the form of god's indisputable order's), but I also found that some of his followers are downright blatant about Bush's moral supremacy and access to divine destiny:

Unless our unparalleled military might is buttressed by a unified commitment to the righteousness of our calling, we will surely defeat ourselves. Terror will have won, and our children and their children will live as strangers to freedom – under the bondage of perpetual fear or the chains of tyranny

Interesting that a downgraded destiny for non-compliance to the "calling" can be inherited by progeny. Mark Twain's wonderful parody, Letters From the Earth, reveals that predestination -- whether by "callings" or otherwise -- utterly contradicts self-determination and liberty. Bush's usage of "our calling" more closely resembles exceptionalism, national supremacy, imperialism, and especially state fascism. How much more life, how much more textuality, will this usage gain?

The Swift Raids of December: Americans Organize Aid for Their Government's Victims

It wouldn't be surprising if you missed the U.S. government's round-up and detention of more than a thousand workers last week since it barely brushed the radar of the media giants. Yet, Labor Start continues to have a flurry of stories. The governments post-hoc pretext was identity theft, but using other people's social security cards, which alone, is far from "identity theft." Identity use might better describe situation, as would use of social security numbers, though it doesn't generate quite the mass panic that comes with the idea of freeloaders racking up debt on your credit cards--as if immigrants really come here to rob and steel.

Some people are just doing the familiar quacking about how they want all undocumented immigrants deported. The New York Times unloads all the popular rhetoric to editorialize for immigration reform. Unions, weighing heavily in on the side of the immigrants, are in an uproar at the precedents being established by big government raiding the work place, and some point to the victimization of illegal immigrants while the bosses go free. Although it was also interesting to read that finally a corporate executive may do time for hiring immigrants illegally, I'm not sure how well that bodes for the immigrants. What's so striking about most of these articles is how little voice is given to the victims.

Of the several stories I've read, the one I found most appealing discusses how citizens in Minneapolis organized a food drive for local victims of the raids. This is the type of solidarity that could prove a far more vital component in defeating the rise of fascism in the U.S.

Donations to Food Banks Decline While Requests Increase

America's Second Harvest, the U.S.'s largest food bank, reports a 9% decrease in donations, while the U.S. Conference of Mayors' reports some startling statistics, including a sharp rise in requests for food:

Among the many disturbing statistics of this year's report: 25% of the residents in emergency shelters were children. One-third of hungry adults were employed. In 6%of the cities, homeless folks had to be turned away from emergency shelters due to a lack of resources. About 74% of the cities saw a marked increase (7%) in the need for emergency food assistance. Over 23% of the requests for emergency food went completely unfilled. The length of time that someone remained homeless increased in 32% of the cities.

What a small price to pay to let congress spend billions of our dollars steeling Iraq's petroleum so at least the big oil executives can keep getting fatter.

Biggest Increase in Inflation Since 1974

Read it for youself.

Agents of a Hidden System of Exploitation and Privilege: The Case of a Las Vegas Mayor who would incarcerate thousands of people left without housing

The well publicized and hideous scapegoating of the homeless functions as a public lesson to deter worker resistance to exploitation. Like those who are subjected to the burden of credit and usury, workers who resist being exploited may be faced with, among other things, becoming dispossessed of housing. Although the dilemma between being exploited or being dispossessed is also constructed at macro levels as large as the nation state, the consequences at the micro level of the individual strike home.

During a decline in buying power, individuals may perceive a narrowed difference between being exploited and being dispossessed. As punishment is applied to those who suffer a condition of "being without housing," a condition of being exploited is encouraged over the added risks of being dispossessed of housing. In attempts to eliminate the threat posed by mass-consciousness of systemic exploitation, attention is diverted to reprisals for the unhoused who are categorically despised, condemned, or even punished.

With mixed success in the courts and on the streets, Las Vegas has tried sweeping away their encampments, closing a park where they hang out, making it a crime to feed them, even passing a ban on sleeping within 500 feet of feces.

Public exhibitions of punishment for the marginalized help deflect blame from the source of the marginalization--the system and its agents, its bosses, mayors, judges, legislators, administrators, lawyers, officers, reporters, and the like. The system uses reverse post-facto reasoning to portray its victims (the exploited and dispossessed) as culprits deserving of punishment: People are punished because they are guilty, therefore those who are punished deserve blame. As the problem of the elite's excesses are hidden and blame is relocated onto their victims, a policy of eliminationism transforms victims into culprits, benefactors into victims. The victims, the unhoused in this case, are redefined as perpetrators--as nuisances, beggars, health risks, tax burdens, drug rings, and lawless public threats. This reversal, this relocation of blame, glosses over and denies the existence of a systemic supremacy, privileging, territoriality, marginalization, and inequity.

As the system mislocates the source of the breakdown, it may seek to repress consciousness and reflection of its own naked absurdity. It may seek to contain recognition of systemic injustice. If the problem grows, it may even seek to eliminate the open presence of the unhoused who, in constant public view, serve as a persistent reminder that flies in the face of system legitimacy. The system may resort to cleansing the streets of the unhoused--by force:

Over the years, the mayor has also proposed moving the homeless to an abandoned prison 30 miles outside the city and once accused Salt Lake City officials of busing the homeless to Las Vegas.

While eliminationism, out of sight and out of mind, strives to preserve a system of privilege and power stratification, it is doomed to fail. When recognition of system break down is eliminated--when humanity fails to even detect it, let alone respond to it--the problem is left to fester. Rather than consider the extent to which an explosion of "homelessness" nationwide is a consequence of systemic privileging, privatization, monopoly and exploitation--rather than consider whether they are among its agents--mayors could be expected to skirt the topic entirely by proffering claims that other cities are responsible for the homeless dumped in theirs. It is tantamount to proclaiming that "they are not 'our' homeless, so we are not obliged to deal with them humanely." This calls into question hundreds of years of progress in ensuring the liberty of citizens to migrate freely within their own countries.

As if the unhoused were always unhoused, as if mere unwanted baggage to be shifted around, mayors may avoid acknowledging the extent to which an increase in homelessness means that more people are being deprived of adequate means of supporting themselves (let alone one another) . Such an increase shouldn't come as a surprise in a world where ordinary workers face an increasingly stratified profit system that aims to use every means imaginable to divert more and more of the fruits their labor into the coffers of a small wealthy minority.

No matter how many unhoused are eliminated from view, whether re-situated into a system of exploitation or institutionalized, still others become unhoused. The problem continually resurfaces because its source is misidentified and unaddressed. Any pretense at "solving the problem of homelessness" must first expose and subvert the collective denial of its systemic features. The myriad of systemic injustices perpetrated against both the ordinary worker and the unhoused alike must be given broad consciousness. Only then will just and equitable solutions be broadly pondered and constructed.

Labor Exploitation Leaves U.S. Border Vulnerable To Terrorists

Virtually every foreign terrorists caught in the U.S. has entered through the Canadian border, while resources get diverted to preventing the union-friendly immigrants from Latin America and Canadian borders guards are overworked:

Homeland Security officers who check incoming travelers at the region's international bridges claim that long hours and forced overtime are causing some officers to be mentally exhausted and are jeopardizing the nation's security.

The article goes on to discuss how border agents have to work for eight hour shifts without bathroom breaks and have to piss in bottles.

In an April 2002 interview, Wilson told The Buffalo News that some officers were working 16-hour shifts, but at that time, he said an anticipated increase in staff would address that problem.

Yet, how the hell do you get an increase in staff by compensating the serious health threat to your worker's health with a mere $29k in a region of the current with a higher cost of living:

"On a hot day, you can get light-headed from breathing in carbon monoxide fumes all day, but still, you have to do your job," Watson said.

But, the U.S. government and corporate power elite could care less about U.S. workers and "terrorists threats." Already, they view organized labor as a greater threat than an Islamic terrorists state. Flashback: remember it wasn't long ago that the current U.S. regime was going to outsource the port control to a terrorists state.

INS Union Busting

Until U.S. citizens get off their fat-asses and unionize, I'm in favor of opening the border to millions more immigrants from Latin America who have the courage to do it for them. It's not the immigrant's who are driving down the wages, it's the corporate pigs and the complacent chicken-shit U.S. workers! The U.S. middle class is flirting with disaster by allowing the INS to deport justice.

US Army Might Break Goodyear Strike

Now here's a way to bring U.S. involvement in Iraq to a grinding halt. If Americans would get of their asses and work together instead of against one another, for a change, many other corporate and impreialist injustices could be reversed. Screw Taft-Hartley, every exploited worker should strike already, government sponsored union or not! Slavery is banned by a constitutional amendment!

US Criminalizes and Imprisons More People Than Any Other Country

2.2 million behind bars! That rivals Stalin's USSSR--TBTW flashback!