Category Archives: Homelessness

Homeless in the good ol’ USA.

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A couple of weeks ago, CBS’ 60 Minutes ran an incredibly touching segment on homeless families.  Scott Pelley assembled a diverse group of homeless children and asked them a series of questions about their circumstances.  They responded by talking about going to bed hungry, the effects of homelessness and hunger on their studies, the shame of feeling different than “normal” kids and their sense of guilt from feeling as though they are a hardship on their parents.

The impact of the segment was both heart-wrenching and utterly maddening.  Despite our current economic problems, we are the richest nation on Earth.  Yet we not only seem to accept the reality that a large segment of our population is struggling to get through each day without proper food, health care or a home.  Some of our right-wing politicians and media pundits even seem determined to blame them for their problems.

They’ve blamed homebuyers for being tricked into unaffordable home loans.  They’ve tried to block unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.  They have called the unemployed lazy.  And they’re trying to repeal (or at least de-fund) the health care bill that will make affordable health care accessible to all Americans.

If these politicians can watch a few of the 16 million impoverished children in America talk about their struggles and still continue to attack programs that could make the lives of these kids better, it’s time for these politicians to go.

Yesterday couldn’t be soon enough.

The no-it-all party.

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As Republicans continue to attack President Obama over the lousy economy they, themselves, created, it becomes painfully obvious that they have no compassion, no ideas, no shame and no clue.  They keep serving up the same failed theories and rhetoric that got us into this mess. 

In their minds, the economy would recover if only the Democrats would provide more tax cuts for the wealthy.  At the same time, Republicans are attempting to stonewall any attempts at regulating Wall Street or reforming the runaway health insurance industry.  In their view, the “free” market and deregulation are cure-alls for anything that ails our economy.

But before anyone wants to sign onto their Reagan-inspired trickle-down economic theories, let’s look at what this kind of thinking has brought us over the last 30 years of Republican leadership:

1 – More than 14 million Americans are currently unemployed, and Federal Reserve Chairmen Ben Bernanke blames the continuing high level of unemployment on the too-big-to-fail banks for failing to make loans to small businesses, the engine that drives our economy. 

2 – 49 million Americans, including 17 million children, currently lack adequate, consistent access to food. 

3 – The VA estimates that 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and 18 veterans commit suicide every single day. 

4 – Nearly 47 million Americans lack health insurance.  Of those, nearly 45,000, including 2,266 veterans, die each year for lack of access to health care. 

5 – In what used to be a sight seen only in third world nations, thousands of American citizens have stood in line for free health care because they lack insurance.  More than 8,000 stood in line to receive health care in Los Angeles alone.  Many were turned away.  1,000 recently stood in line for free health care in New Orleans and there are similar free clinics scheduled in Little Rock, Kansas City and other U.S. cities.

These are not the kind of problems that will be solved by more tax cuts for the wealthy or further deregulation of our greedy, ship-the-jobs-off-shore industries.  They require substantial commitments of tax dollars, along with fresh ideas and political will, neither of which are currently available from the Republican Party.