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