American Road Leads Off a Cliff

Excerpt from article by Holly Sklar at Providence Journal (Rhode Isalnd)

The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973 (adjusted for inflation), despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone, in the Corporate Library survey of 2000 large companies.

Median household income has fallen an unprecedented five years in a row. It would be even lower if not for increased household work hours. Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized countries.

We are breaking records we don't want to break. Record numbers of Americans have no health insurance. The share of national income going to wages and salaries is the lowest since 1929. Middle-class households are a medical crisis, an outsourced job, or a busted pension away from bankruptcy.

OSHA to Interior Workers: "Drop Dead"

Democrats to Bait Voters With a Proposed Minimum Wage Hike

A minimum wage hike would be no great accomplishment. It would only count for the tiniest progress in reversing the pervassive inequities of the current corporate oligarchy. A mere hike in minimum wage is the least that must be done. The people should not be content to leave the Democrats confidently riding into office on such campaign bait as a proposed hike in minimum wage, since, after all, the Democrats are almost as violent toward economic equity and labor rights as the Republicans. Instead, the people should take the opportunity to build a movement that can push for far greater equity and mount a challenge to Democrats and Republicans alike.

Republicans to Let More Americans Freeze to Death

From Joe at America Blog: Link

Favorable Opinions of Wal-Mart Drop Rapidly, Poll Shows

Excerpt from NYT article:

The poll showed that a majority, 58 percent, viewed Wal-Mart favorably, but the figure was down from 76 percent in January. Wake Up Wal-Mart said that was proof that its message against the company's low-price business model is hitting its intended target -- the average Wal-Mart shopper.

How long will it be before this drop leads to a drop in consumption? Mick Arran at The Resistance offers his observations which suggest it's already down, contrary to media myths of record consumption on Black Friday.

SEIU Organizes 5000 Janitors in Houston

Good news by way of the The Resistance (formerly Dispatch from the Trenches).

Racial Poverty Gaps in U.S. Amount to Human Rights Violation, Says U.N. Expert

Link!

The Ultimate Weapon to Control the Masses: Privatized Water

Dirty water is the world's #1 killer! Will congressional action come close to overcoming profit-driven trends? Limiting access to clean drinking water can be used to make all other rights contingent on wealth or submission.

U.S. White Supremacy Kills More than Katrina

Unfortunately, the complicit U.S. media won't touch this. From Britian:

The racial health gap in the US kills more people every week that Hurricane Katrina, claims new research.

Inequalities between white and black Americans cause 84,000 extra fatalities each year – equating to the same weekly number of victims that perished in the hurricane, according to an editorial published in the British Medical Journal.

More info about this study at Eli's Captialism Kills at Left I On The News.

Buy Nothing Day (BND is Nov. 25th in the U.S.)

Help slow the blind consummerism that moves wealth and power upward to the ruling investor class: Give the gift of nothing! In the U.S., BND is Friday Nov. 25. Here's a couple of the many websites about BND: http://www.buynothingday.org/ and addbusters.org,

AFL-CIO Creates On-line Database of Corporate Negligence, Exploitiation and Violence against American Workers

At Working America's job tracker, you can "find out which companies in your area are exporting jobs, endangering workers' health or involved in cases of violations of workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The database contains information on more than 60,000 companies nationwide."

Cheney's Halliburton/KBR Using Slave Labor for Katrina Clean-up

Click here!

FEMA to Pull Plug and Leave Up to 53,000 Katrina Evacuees Homeless

Link here!

National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week is November 13-19

Click here to find out how you can participate

The War on the Poor Hits the Middle Class

How much harder does it have to get? Dispatch from the Trenches would say a lot harder if Democratic politicians keep side-stepping the problem!

U.S. Senate Votes to Screw America

The Senate's slashing of food and education assistance has nothing to do with reducing the deficit and everything to do with tax breaks for the wealthy. Click here for Hunter's analysis and related links at Daily Kos.

Well protected by their fences and cops, the wealthy don't mind if insurance premiums, theft, robberies, and muggings escalate. But, will they mind if the sleeping giant awakens to make French toast in the U.S.? The answer may depend on the profitability of expanding secret U.S. gulags.

Hunger Rising Sharply in U.S.A.

Quoting Laura Gardner as published in Medical News Today:

This is an unexpected and even stunning outcome," noted center director Dr. J. Larry Brown, a leading scholarly authority on domestic hunger. "This chronic level of hunger so long after the recession ended means that it is a man-made problem. Congress and the White House urgently need to address growing income inequality and the weakening of the safety net in order to get this epidemic under control."

[ . . . ]

With this astonishing level of food deprivation in America," Brown concluded, "we need President Bush to step up to the plate. If he now asks Congress to cut federal food programs, hunger will increase even further. We need the moral leadership to stem this crisis.

Wal-Mart Hates America

Wal-Mart is under pressure to offer health insurance to all of its under-paid workers, over half of whom currently have no choice but to use state-funded health care to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars per year. In anticipation of legislation that would send Wal-Mart a bill for burdening taxpayers, Wal-Mart has decided to take measures to ensure that the only people hired will be those least likely to need health insurance--the young and strong. Also, a leaked memo reveals Wal-Mart's "concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive."

Take action against this corporate vampire.

Class War: Paying the Poor to Fight One Another

Someone should pay them to unite to fight the wealthy robbers who divide and conquer all.

Does Madison's Plan Help or Exploit the Homeless?

When Madison's Homeless Services Consortium knowingly excluded the homeless by shutting down the only committee that included them, they lost access to the inside view. Little coincidence that the Consortium's draft report (update: now apparently missing from website at link) is nearly devoid of rigor and empirical data--it could hardly even pass for undergraduate sociological research. It's mostly guess-work that uses only "perceived" problems and data. Anything passing for "analysis" only includes data drawn from those who applied for assistance. Those estimates don't include car-campers ranging anywhere from dozens to hundreds at any given time; nor does it include those who are doubled-up, a figure which would probably include hundreds if not thousands more; nor does it include people who simply don't apply for assistance because they think that assistance is only for people who fall into institutionalized categories, such as people with mental or physical disabilities, with substance issues, with children, or with criminal records; nor does it include the sane and sober who cannot deal with being isolated in an housing arrangement that's concentrated with their (would-be-recovering) counterparts. Best I can tell after a first read, the consortium's report doesn't even include economic forecasts of deflating wages and inflating of prices (ie, projected changes in buying-power), which will better predict increases in homelessness than just continuing to chart recent trends.

Although housing first(HF) has an empirically demonstrated success rate 5 times greater than other programs, the consortium has proposed an HF pilot program that will serve only a few dozen people in a city where thousands end up homeless every year. Perhaps because the flawed right-wing logic of completely unprofessional organizations like the Salvation Army still holds sway, the consortium continues to focus on "rehabilitating" the homeless first and housing them later. The conservative movement of the 1890s came to realize the problem resided not in reforming the needy, but in reforming those who exploited them--the wealthy robber barons. Hence, we ended up with antitrust laws and the legendary republican, Fighting Bob. Out of that conservative movement arose what came to be called progressivism, a movement rooted in social equity and justice. Here may be a real case where forgetting history dooms people to repeat it.

Nothing in this consortium's report even hints at confronting the dominant cause of homelessness--an unjust economic structure. Any rigor would have concluded that the consortium would do better to put a large part of its energy into advocacy for sweeping economic reforms. As with becoming impoverished, most people end up homeless because they aren't paid enough and because of unnecessarily inflated prices, not because they don't know how to manage their finances, not because they are dumb or addicted to a substance. How can this consortium think $450 per month is "affordable housing" for someone making minimum wage? And that's the low end of what they think is affordable! Fair wages and affordable prices would provide most people with a large enough savings to endure a crisis should they end up sick or laid-off. As is, most Americans are just a paycheck or two away from homelessness.

If Madison can't house a few thousand homeless people, what the hell are they going to do when an economic tsunami hits? Figure out how to provide housing in the event of an economic crisis, and not only will all current housing problems quickly disappear, but that economic crisis itself may be averted. There is no qualitative difference between this hypothetical crisis and the current problem: It's human-created disaster. Solve the problem, or otherwise keep that cozy do-gooder feeling running, while the masses on the streets build-up into mobs with nothing left to loose by taking what they need. In the words of Flannery O'Connor, the life you save may be your own.

I'm pissed by the perpetual whitewash. Rather than housing the homeless, I'm really suspicious that this consortium, even if unintended, is more about retaining access to funding, reducing work-load and creating more case-worker jobs!

U.S. Labor in Retreat

Wealthy scum are milking us dry in the race to the bottom!

US Firms Accused of Exploiting Workers in Post-Hurricane Recovery Effort

U.S. corporate media giants will hardly touch the topic of labor exploitation in the Katrina aftermath--what, according to Jesse Jackason, is a corporate feeding freenzy with full support of the federal government, while yet another corporate mop-up threatens.

Rightwing Christian Fanatics Now targeting American Girl!

Madison, WI-based American Girl doll line contributes to a youth program called "Girls Inc." Deferring to later all further satire about the corporatization of female youth, from this youth program's website we find the following:

Girls Incorporated is a national nonprofit youth organization dedicated to inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. With roots dating to 1864, Girls Inc has provided vital educational programs to millions of American girls, particularly those in high-risk, underserved areas. Today, innovative programs help girls confront subtle societal messages about their value and potential, and prepare them to lead successful, independent, and fulfilling lives.

Fanatical rightwing christian organizations are urging a boycott against American Girl, claiming Girls Inc. programs "support abortion, oppose abstinence-only education for girls, and condone lesbianism." Though the advocacy pages of their website do mention that Girls Inc. supports "a woman's freedom of choice, a constitutional right established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe vs. Wade," I couldn't find anything that mentions abortion or "lesbian-ism."

While girls age 12 to 14 are taught "the positive aspects of abstinence," further education about pregnancy prevention appears to be included only in programs for ages 15-18.

In the advocacy pages at the Girls Inc. website, the only other statements I could find that might even come close to the fanatics' claims are as follows:

Working with girls and young women, we also endeavor to eliminate sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination.

We recognize that any sizable group of girls includes those who face issues related to their sexual orientation or that of a family member and who face discrimination based on this sexual orientation. Girls have a right to positive, supportive environments and linkages to community resources for dealing with issues of sexual orientation

Perhaps the fanatics are afraid children who attend this program will influence their own children, who in turn will start to resist oppressive fanatical dogma. Perhaps the fanatics are merely afraid they'll end up having to talk to their children about the god-forbidden topic of sexuality. Or perhaps they have even more sinister motives for wanting kids kept in the dark.

Whatever the case, most damaging to the fanatical christian con-artist is probably the fact that a non-religious, girl-power program actually gets results:

A three-year evaluation found: older teens who completed the program were half as likely to have sex and one-third as likely to get pregnant in the year following the program as those who participated less or not at all; younger teens who completed the program were half as likely to have sexual intercourse as those who participated less or not at all.

I bet very few rightwing christian programs can match that--despite faith-based government subsidies! If news of the success of Girl Inc. spreads, the christian fanatics might loose their ability to continue to scam taxpayers. Of course, don't expect the fanatical christian con-artist to complain if their followers grow suspicious that the only way such high success at pregnancy prevention could be achieved is either by turning little girls into lesbians or by witchcraft. Might that account for the use of the appendage of "-ism?" Perhaps some will opt to return the kindness, and accuse the fanatics of condoning "straight-ism" and subject their churches to colorful pickets and ridicule!

Contrary to their claims, it's doubtful that very many christian rightwingers would buy or invest in the American Girl doll line in the first place. These toys are intended to educate kids about history. Rank-and-file rightwing christian fanatics have little affinity for education, and even less for history. Approaching $100 per doll with a single accompanying story book, American Girl is probably a tad expensive for the gullible wages of most of these fanatics. A full package of books, clothes, furniture, and other accessories for a single doll can run hundreds more. That's thousands of dollars for the entire collection. These toys would be more common for wealthy kids, and most wealthy rightwingers could care less about the homophobic and anti-choice obsessions of their fanatical christian co-conspirators.

A boycott will probably have negligible impact, and American Girl founder and tycoon, Pleasant Roland, probably isn't the least worried. Corporate legends in Madison have it that she is following her own vision which, unlike that of the fanatics, is all about making tons of money and using some of it to empower future generations of women and artists. Ironically, this attempt at a boycott may ultimately do more to promote Girls Inc., and American Girl as a consequence, by drawing attention to how successful Girl Inc. programs are. It makes one wonder who's really behind this benign threat of a boycott.

Were it not imperative to deal with this distraction, a better discussion might have included how accessible Girls Inc. programs are for girls of low-income families, and how to implement analogous programs in public education, so all of society benefits.

Perhaps it would have been even more fun to discuss the corporatization of female youth. Maybe another day.

(Oh ye kids of rightwingers, thou shalt not read the Kinsey Report! ;-)

A State Street Family Album

After years of repeatedly pitching Madison, WI as the best place in the country to live, one has to wonder if Money, and a number of other elite magazines, spent even a fraction of the time on State street that photographer Glenn H. Austin has. Austin's moving and illuminating photo-essay on the homeless culture of the city's most famous street not only shatters illusions and stereotypes about homeless people, but it helps expose the brutality of an unjust system that consistently excludes certain people and leaves them to suffer a chilling fate. Austin offers many instances where the street culture, if allowed to exist in the open, actually develops healthier values and practices than mainstream society. A must-see-and-read, a real lesson in humanity straight from the homeless themselves!

Food Blockades Flush People from U.S. and Iraqi Cities

At the time, the official reason for blocking food, water, and medical assistance from entering New Orleans was to force the residents to evacuate. To gloss over the sad reality, the propagandists said the blockade was in effect "so as not to encourage people to stay," or because "it was unsafe to enter," even for law enforcement officers and the red cross.

Perhaps FEMA et al borrowed starvation-of-cities as an evacuation technique from the illegal combat tactic that a U.N. official alleges the U.S. has been using in Iraq and elsewhere. Though the Geneva convention may hold that food blockades are illegal warfare, is it otherwise legal to use the tactic in the absence of war? To evacuate U.S. cities like New Orleans?

Get a Job!

"Getting a job is almost impossible when you have dirty clothes, no place to sleep and are wet from days of rain."

Here are a couple of new work opportunities for homeless people: "San Francisco homeless earn paychecks for work as film extras: New 'movie stars' make $8.62 an hour, gain recognition and self-esteem boost." In Oregon, mushroom-picking programs that help homeless people are under threat of Forest Service regulations. Update: Forest Service suspends new mushroom-picking permits for the season! Well, make that just one new opportunity for the homeless.

But, surely more work can be generated for the homeless--in every city, every community!

Homeless Win Suit Against Police Sweeps in St. Louis

Now that they can't incarcerate them, maybe they'll start thinking about housing them. Link.

Housing First!

Paul Carlson, the regional coordinator for the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, speaking of the homeless at Lincoln County Housing summit in Oregon:

We have done everything else first," he said. "We told them to take their medical pills, treated them for mental health first; we tried to get them clean and sober first, we've given them tenant training first. Why would we do everything else, when what they need is housing, and it should be obvious? It's housing first."

What's more, he continued, "in study after study," housing the homeless - whether they have been diagnosed with mental illness, or alcohol or drug problems, or with a prior history of being unsuccessful tenants- - has proven vastly more successful than any other approach. With the change to "housing first," success in reconstructing the lives of the chronically homeless has gone, he said, from 15 percent to 85 percent."

It turned out that getting stable housing provides the fundamental security these people need; a platform for recovery from alcohol, for treatment, for being able to hold down the job and stay sober," Carlson said. "All that won't happen if you are living on the street. They need permanent supportive housing, housing first, and then after that we can offer them drug treatment or mental health treatment. When they have a home they will take you up on your offer" of other kinds of assistance.

Carlson's got it right: HOUSING FIRST!

However, what's important to realize is that, instead of being the effect, homelessness and dire poverty may often be the cause of alcoholism, psychological disorders, etc. In many places, there is comparably less assistance available to "ordinary" people, those without psychological problems and without alcohol/drug problems, should they end up homeless. Since funding tends to be slated for treatment of those suffering from the likes of mental illness or substance addition, little is slated for programs to help those who don't fall into categories stereotypically attached to the homeless. It may be a matter of time until "homelessness" itself leaves an ordinary, healthy person suffering from alcoholism or mental disorders.

With no other options, any ordinary person who ends up broke and homeless might use alcohol to kill the pain of a tooth ache or to stay warm in the winter. Imagine yourself living outdoors in the middle of town for months or years, with no income and no resources, in front of all your well-fed acquaintances who, for whatever reasons, refuse to help you, no matter how obvious your need. Would you keep your cheerful demeanor after staying awake for several days because it's illegal to be caught sleeping under an awning during prolonged rain? Would you keep on smiling and laughing after months or years of being expelled, threatened with arrest, for trying to get warm at indoor establishments where you can't afford to be a paying customer? After moths or years of a diet that depends on random scraps from dumpsters? After days, weeks, months or years with no bath? After being threatened or attacked by vigilantes, just because you're a convenient scapegoat whose tattered and dirty clothes spoil the scenery? After months or years of trying to hide your homelessness in order to avoid being a target of violence, arrest, or ridicule? Or, contrarily, after swallowing your pride in order to suffer months or years of scorn for begging and pleading for help? Would it not be enough to drive almost anyone to drink, if but to avoid going nuts? Quite likely, only the most extraordinarily strong-spirited could endure unscathed.

To the extent that homelessness itself causes mental problems, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc, the expense of paying for rehabilitation and/or for a range of other health problems may be avoided by providing housing first. In short, "housing first" may also be the economical thing to do.

Is the Delphi Bankruptcy an attempt to Bust-Up UAW?

KOS's analysis and links. How interesting that Delphi declares bankruptcy, its workers get laid off and loose their pensions, but themselves cannot file for bankruptcy because of the new personal bankruptcy law that goes into effect in coming weeks. Rumors are GM is testing the waters with Delphi. If GM follows and it leads to the demise of UAW, will that result in mass violence not seen since the early days of labor movement?

Company Employed By DNC Busts Union

Erin Rosa has a story at Kos and a more detailed story at Corporate Mofo entitled, "Telefund, Checkbook Liberalism, and the Exploitation of the Worker," which details IWW efforts to organize Telefund.

When I worked for Telefund, I seem to recall that I was actually paid by Grassroots Campaigns and/or Grassroots Voter Outreach, depending on whether it was a lobby group or PAC. Grassroots, purportedly a sister company of Telefund, works for many of the same progressive organizations. Like Telefund, it has many shops around the country, any number of which can be quickly converted from a canvassing operation to a Telefund operation, or the reverse. Whether intended or not, this constant switching of campaigns and nature-of-work is a built-in resistance to union organizing. For example, many employees who want a sit-down job quit when it switches to a canvass, and many who want an outdoors job quit when they are asked to sit in a room for eight hours on the phone. Similarly, some may like raising funds for PFAW, but may maintain principled opposition to the DNC, in which case they are out of work whenever there is a switch from PFAW to the DNC. There are other mechanisms, like unrealistic quotas and penalties to one's base pay, which contribute to such a high turn-over rate that any worker is left to wonder if the high turn-over is by design. Much of the office directors' labor seems to be absorbed in putting up posters which advertise "campaign" jobs, and then interviewing and training new workers. Supporting the idea that this is union-busting by design is the fact that GCI/GVO and telefund have very few if any long-term, quality, non-management workers who may eventually demand stability, better compensation, or benefits.

Contact the DNC to encourage them to pressure Grassroots and Telefund to clean-up their act, stop busting unions, and treat their workers fairly.

Money First, People Last!

A conference causes Katrina evacuees to be evicted to make room in DeMoines, IA. Meanwhile, in Madison, WI, homeless people lose hotel rooms to Dairy Expo. Will the poor soon have to go to the end of the line at supermarkets, too?

Update: NC Battle to Win the Right for Homeless People to Vote

"County Democratic Party Chairman Michael D. Evans, representatives of the Black Political Caucus, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN and several elected officials gathered in Charlotte on Tuesday to criticize James," who refuses to accept a temporary shelter as a legal address for voter registration by the homeless. An earlier story about this particular battle in the long struggle for universal suffrage. Could the outcome of this show-down set a federal legal precedent for denying the homeless the right to vote? If a senator finds the gumption to ask Bush's Supreme Court nominees whether the U.S. constitution guarantees all citizens the right to vote, perhaps that would help expose the need for a constitutional amendment establishing that right.

Making the Visible Invisible

Do you see what I see? My first response to this letter was to wonder what is meant by "see." I'm tending toward the opinion that "not seeing" is NOT just because people don't know or don't care, as I'd thought in the past, but that it's also because of mental repression of dissonance, repression of the unbearably sad, shocking or vulgar--a sublime process that withholds from consciousness that which is in plain sight. Perhaps, at times, the precondition for such repression involves fear of the consequences of taking action coupled to the guilt that results from not taking action. In vernacular, "damned if you do, damned if you don't, so just don't think about it."

Congress to Slash Food Aid to Poor and Cut Assistance to Farmland Environmental Protection Programs

So the poor will have to eat less food and more pesticides. Link

Miers' Top Agenda: Rob America's Poor and Middle Class Bone-Dry

Sirota's got the dirt and grime crime on Miers. So far, it looks like the Democrats are deluding themselves that they can bluff the Republicans into taking the lead in opposing Bush's latest nominee, so the Dems can save their last-chance filibuster for later. I'm not convinced Republicans will take that bait.

Irrespective, Miers MUST be opposed. She is a first-class fascist criminal who deserves only unanimous opposition from the entire senate and country. However poetically just it may seem to some, America should NOT allow criminals on the Supreme Court.

Here's two of Sitrota's latest articles on Miers: Miers Led Law Firm Forced to Pay Major Fines for Defrauding Investors and Dems' Non-Ideological Case Against Harriet Miers.

And, here Jordan Barab finds that Harriet Miers Headed Law Firm Engaged In Union Busting Avoidance.

Home Builders Use Faith-based Charities to Skirt Home Financing Laws, Leaving Avalanche Destined to Become Homeless in a Leaking Housing Bubble

Hurricane Katrina victims should beware of this HOUSING SCAM!

Of course, one could expect that the NYT would begin to highlight the problem only after it arrives: Slowing Is Seen in Housing Prices in Hot Markets

While Media Transparency says that Faith-based charity fueled the housing bubble, MSN's Fleckenstein, in his article "Empty houses, falling prices: A boom dies," says it's really more of a credit bubble than a housing bubble. Fleckenstein concurs that the bubble is partly the result of dubious practices where inevitable foreclosures escalate to force more and more people, especially low-income people, out of their homes and into financial ruin. One dubious method, published in a September 19 Columbus Dispatch article entitled "Loophole Fuels Zero-Down Mortgages," includes the following:

Homebuilders across the country, including Dominion Homes, have found a way around a Federal law barring sellers from giving money directly to buyers for a down payment. They route the money through charities such as the Nehemiah Corp. of America, a faith-based group in California. Nehemiah provides down payments for both existing and new homes, and its relationship with Dominion is the largest of its kind in central Ohio between a builder and charity.

Nehemiah uses a loophole in federal regulations that allows charities to provide the 3% down payment required to qualify for Federal Housing Administration mortgages. An uncounted number of copycats have followed, leading to an explosion of 'zero-down' loans. Federal authorities do not regulate or track such organizations.

Such foul practices entice many poor people to finance beyond their means and inevitably take a major loss when they are forced to sell their homes at a depreciated value, far less than what they invested in them, or else loose-out to forclosure. With this being perfectly legal, one can imagine that the scam will be used as template for builders and faith-based charities to cash-in on Katrina victims, at least while the getting is still good.

Thomas Leavitt (at Seeing the Forest for the Trees) has followed the political money trail of Dominion Homes using Political Money Line where anyone is welcome to try their own luck at connecting the dots between money and politics.

For now, I'm content to leave it as mere "theory" that Greenspan wanted to keep secret an alleged deliberately-constructed housing bubble. But, Carolyn Baker may well be onto something as she argues that New Orleans was just a dress rehearsal for a lockdown on America !

BEWARE!

Homeless come in eight categories

From the Arizona Daily Sun:

According to the federal government as defined by the McKinney-Vento Act, homeless is a person who "lacks a fixed, regular and adequate night-time residence .."And the residence the person does have is a publicly or privately run temporary shelter of some sort.

Yet, Arizona's Department of Economic Security (DES) prefers to further narrow the number of people who it's willing to recognize as homeless:

The homeless are divided into eight categories by DES: Elderly persons; Chronically homeless; Families with children; Youth; Veterans; Victims of domestic violence; People with addictions, who make up nearly 50 percent of all homeless; People with mental illness.

In other words, if you are homeless, does Arizona refuse to acknowledge your homelessness unless you belong to one of these eight categories? Sounds like it. To get the assistance necessary to end the homelessness, how many homeless people would then be faced with choices such as: making babies, or becoming (or pretending to be) mentally ill or hooked on drugs. This begs further questions, like, how many people are addicts as result of homelessness?

And, lets not overlook the DES's trick for deflating the number of homeless people further:

Local social service providers don't hold much stock in the DES numbers, which
are based on instances of service provided . . .

The total homeless count does not include those who were denied service, nor does it attempt to estimate those who didn't even apply. Like everywhere else, it's an administrative policy that glosses over the suffering that remains unaddressed and unfunded--it's an administrative policy of cover-up. What leads to a systemic policy that erases any trace of those who slip between the cracks by design? Is it the administrators job security? Political expedience? Ideology or ethos? Is it more or less the same in other states?

The Path to Fascism in America

Escalation of corporate monopoly that concentrates power and wealth. Poverty, prison work-camps and anti-labor laws for the masses. Ain't that America. We've seen it all before. Link

Funeral for Homeless Dumpster-Diver Killed By Garbage Truck

Just one of the many risks that many homeless must take to survive. Such deaths are common enough that "women in Black holds a vigil for every homeless person in King County who dies outdoors or by violence. Lark was the 37th person honored this year[in King County], and the number of homeless dying has gone up in recent years . . ." A lot more needs to be done than just holding funerals.

Living Tooth to Bottle

Dental care alone might help break the cycle of poverty for some people. How many poor people become alcoholics because they can't afford dental care? Link

Exploiting Katrina

I'm sure the bastards are gonna try to take the tax payers to the cleaners in every imaginable way. Here's one voice about the voucher slush fund, where Bush will shell out $7,500 dollars per child, without stipulations of federal or state oversight, without accountability for the quality of education provided. So, could scammers set up shop in a basement, herd-up about thirty students, then walk away with nearly a quarter million bucks, but leave the kids with a minimum wage babysitter for eight hours a day during which anything resembling "quality education" is completely absent? What's next? Child labor camps on U.S. soil?

Homeless Man Slain in a Bed at Shelter

And people wonder why some homeless people would rather take their chances outdoors than risk being attacked or murdered in a shelter. People need housing, not cattle shelters which breed conflict, and certainly not incarceration.

Evacuees Go To Top Of The List… and Locals Get Dumped in LA

While others continue wait . . .

Here in Madison, WI (and probably nationwide), this same conflict is emerging between locals who've waited for assistance for years and the evacuees who are given homes, furniture, good jobs, and automobiles within days of the time crisis hit them. There needs to be more public outcry to eliminate poverty nationwide--NOW.

Much thanks to the homeless guy (in Nashville) who found this interesting website on homelessness in LA which has massive coverage about law enforcement officials picking up homeless people in the suburbs and dumping them on Skidrow in the center of Los Angelos.

Is the Working Class Subdued by Having a Poverty Class?

Among the wave of discussion surrounding hurricane Katrina, Tom Teepen argues, in essence, that it's culturally imperative that the current wave of public attention to poverty die out:

The fashionability of the poor will fade again soon enough because it has to. The rest of us need the poor in order to validate ourselves.

It is the American boast that this is the land of opportunity and anyone -- anyone -- can make it here if they just apply themselves. It follows then that the flops are never victims of system flaws and are always failures instead, and it follows, too, that you and I are doing well, or well enough or at least not as badly as those others, thanks only to our own grit and cleverness. The poor are a great reassurance to the rest of us.

Tepeen's point raises a lot of questions.

Accepting Teepen's proposition that the lower class gets self-esteem and status by having widespread poverty beneath them, what would it mean if that poverty were eliminated? Would the lower class no longer be pacified? With that presumed loss of status and esteem, would the lower class then start to awaken to the reality that they themselves are both the victims of and participants in a system that exploits and robs the majority for the benefit of a wealthy minority? Would that consciousness translate into resistance? That resistance into change?

There is a common contemporary debate over whether it's better to fund advocacy or programs. Is it better that the middle class and lower class pour their limited resources directly into charity programs that alleviate poverty for some, or better that they instead put their limited resources into the indirect political gamble of advocacy, such as lobbying and political campaigns for the creation of government programs which could eliminate poverty altogether?

Also, Teepen's point, whether he realizes it or not, challenges the typical (and most likely fallacious) view that more people will have to fall into poverty and suffer before broader resistance to the fascist system will emerge. Not only is this later view problematic if one accepts the proposition that the lower class derives status (and is pacified enough to give consent to the system) by having more people suffering beneath them, but the view that "more suffering means more resistance" is especially problematic when one considers that most who land in poverty are completely disempowered. Those surviving hand-to-mouth have no time and no resources to help bring about any change. Any additional burden is too great to risk.

Having slowly migrated down from middle class to dire poverty, what I do know is that the impoverished are far more aware of the consequences of our fascist system than the lower or middle classes. In fact, some of us experience dire poverty partly because of our principled refusal to help prop-up corporate fascism while there are no other appatent means to escape poverty. Some of the impoverished simply refuse to cave-in to the likes of Walmart. With some means, plenty could and would contribute toward positive change.

Another Republican Denies Homeless Vote

Add this to the list of reasons for a constitutional amendment ensuring every citizen the unconditional right to vote.

As with many states, to have the right to vote requires not just an address but that the address be one's primary residence as well. Because this is fundamentally impossible for the homeless, the homeless are easily denied the right to vote. So, it is not true when James says "the homeless are allowed to vote. I have no quarrel with that. But they have to follow the law," by which he means that they have to have a residence. This is to say that the homeless can vote as long as they aren't homeless. I imagine that makes perfect sense to most republicans who really wouldn't want a million or two homeless people to be granted the legal right to vote. So much for all that hot air about spreading freedom and democracy!

With the prospects of a federal law requiring an identificationon card to be eligible to vote, this problem will likely get worse since an address is normally required to get an I.D.

For Katrina Victims: Homelessness Illegality By Cities Nationwide

For those who slip between the cracks of America's response to the tens of thousands left homeless after Katrina and the other 2005 hurricanes, here is a breakdown of the different ordinances and laws that different cities around the country use to persecute the homeless (this was last updated in 2004, and with the national trend to crack down on homeless people, laws in somce places may be even harsher. Homeless people with a choice of cities may wish to choose a city wisely.

A quick look at the list of top twenty cities that are meanest towards homeless people will reveal that many of the cities regarded as "safe havens" for homeless people have in recent years become the most hostile of all. Of course, any homeless person here in Madison, WI will tell you that this narrative glosses over many horrifying realities, like the hell of being shut outdoors in sub-freezing temperatures in the winter, since Madison's shelters have a ninety day limit which many homeless people use-up by the end of February, periodically leaving people to die in the cold.

Of course, nationwide hostility toward the homeless has been growing for over a decade, so this is at least one thing that can't be blamed just on the Bush administration.

Note to Katrina Victims: Please help shatter the myth that homelessness is largely caused by drug use or mental illness. While I would argue that the main cause of homeless is the inequity and unfair distribution of society's wealth, a homeless guy in Nashville reveals "that the reason why the overwhelming majority of people become chronically homeless is due to painful negative social events, of which becoming homeless is the only way the person can escape them."

Although the outpour of compassion, mutual aid, and private charity may be well and good in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricanes, it is but a temporary patch and isn't sustainable under present conditions. To the extent that most of this private charity will burden the middle and lower classes, the unfair distribution of society's wealth will be worsened. This is why the problem must be confronted by taxation of the ultra-wealthy billionaires who not only can easily afford it but who can't possibly even feel the loss. That wealth, exacted from the exploitation of millions of poor and middle class workers, should be redirected to the deserving, if not in salaries and wages, then in the form direct subsistence, health care, education and training, as well federal jobs programs. In time, this need will grow increasingly self-evident and imperative as tens of thousand more homeless people are instantly scattered around the country, as millions more continue to fall into poverty, as the middle and poor classes become so strained that their ability to offer charity will fall dramatically shorter and shorter, as homelessness and poverty explodes to the point that it becomes a unbearable expense in terms of public health and incarceration, and as global warming and more intense hurricanes cause such castastrophic mass dislocations to continue for decades to come. The time for change is now, before it's too late.

Hurricane Katrina as Excuse to End Posse Comitatus

William M. Arkin:

Nothing in law prevents the President from employing the military in a Katrina-like emergency if state and local government really breaks down. In fact, the 130-year-old Posse Comitatus Act more symbolizes the military's subordination to civil authority than it actually restricts what the
military can do. More . . .

Bush, speaking on the aftermath of Katrina:

It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces . . . --G.W. Bush, New Orleans, 9/15/05, full transcript here.

Yet, Bush already had (not just) all the federal authority he needed, but a responsibility that he and DHS Secretary Chertoff neglected, under the national response plan. Perhaps Tommy Franks may have known more than he told when he suggested Bush might suspend the U.S. constitution.

Maybe Bush wasn't joking:

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator..."--G.W. Bush, Washington, DC, Dec 18, 2000, during his first trip to Washington as President-Elect

Missing: 517 Prisoners Left to Drown in New Orleans Jail

Jails may house people incarcerated for minor citations like outstanding traffic tickets, and may also house innocent people who haven't even been indicted or arraigned, let alone tried and convicted, innocent people whose release may simply be pending bail or acquittal. Many innocent people may have been trapped in a death cell against their will, left to die. This, of course, doesn't suggest people deemed guilty are any more deserving of a death sentence. Were 517 inmates disappeard? Is this more American genocide?

From Common Dreams News Center:

Human Rights Watch compared an official list of all inmates held at Orleans Parish prison immediately prior to the hurricane with the most recent list of the evacuated inmates compiled by the state Department of Corrections and Public Safety (which was entitled, “All Offenders Evacuated”). However, the list did not include 517 inmates from the jail . . .

Right To Return

The Black Commentator 's Glen Ford:

"The people of New Orleans have the right to be made whole, again. They are citizens, wounded by their own government. The rights of citizens cannot be privatized, or churched-out, or Salvation-Armyed out. All help is appreciated, but we must also focus on rights – the right to not be permanently displaced by depraved government policies or the corporate greed that will certainly try to swallow New Orleans whole – just as whole as did the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. . . . Displacement based on race is a form of genocide, as recognized under the Geneva Conventions. Destruction of a people’s culture, by official action or depraved inaction, is an offense against humanity, under international law. "

Genocide to Gentrify

Purging the Poor

Support Katrina Victims Responsibly

The impetus that got me to set up this blog:

With all concerned eyes diverted to the war, will the material conditions of the poor improve as a result of the public discussion spurred by these hurricanes? When the fundraisers and relief efforts are done, will there be more homeless people or fewer? More malnutrition or less? I think it depends, in part, on how much noise and trouble we (poor people) make!

--muse

List of Grassroots Action-Oriented Efforts to Help Katrina Victims Responsibly

Family Farm Defenders

People's Hurricane Relief Fund: DONATE by mail

Background and Project Contacts: People's Hurricane Relief Fund/Community Labor United

Federation for Southern Cooperatives

Rebuild New Orleans Green

Southern Empowerment Project

Southern Mutual Help Association

Grassroots/Low-income/People of Color-led Hurricane Katrina Relief