Category Archives: Homelessness

What will be the Boomers’ legacy?

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The generation that began with so much promise – helping to improve civil rights, volunteering for the Peace Corps, and forcing an end to the Vietnam war – is now at a crossroads.  As we reach retirement age, the Baby Boomer generation has to consider what our legacy will be.  Will we be remembered for the aforementioned accomplishments?  Or will we be remembered for unparalleled greed, selfishness and hate?

The answer depends on what we do next.

You see, I believe that Boomers have enjoyed advantages few other generations have.  Unlike our parents, Boomers have enjoyed relative peace and prosperity.  Most of our parents worked hard and scrimped to send us to college in record numbers.  Many of our parents passed along modest estates.  And, unlike our parents, we didn’t face great economic hardships until late in our careers when our retirement funds should have been nearly complete.

Our generation has enjoyed rising salaries, inexpensive food, and inexpensive energy.  Our taxes have been lower than previous generations, so we have had the opportunity to keep more of our earnings.  We have had more machines to help with our labor.  We have had more leisure time.  We have traveled more.  And we have had more options for entertainment.

The real question is, what have we accomplished as a result of all these advantages?

We have consumed a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources.  We have polluted the planet, resulting in dramatic climate change.  We have failed to address poverty and hunger in our own country, let alone around the world.  And though we contributed to the end of the Vietnam War and the Cold War, we have opened new battlefronts in the Middle East to protect our oil interests.

So now what?  As we reach retirement, will we display the greed and contempt for the poor as the Tea Party has done?  Or will we devote at least some of our retirement to charity?  Will we help end poverty in the U.S. and the world?  Will we make health care affordable for all – not just the wealthy and the connected?  Will we find ways to curb pollution?  Will we force our corporations to pay their fair share of taxes and create jobs in our own country?  Will we finally level the playing field for minorities and women?  Will we find ways to end homelessness in our own nation – find shelter for the approximately 2 million homeless children?  Will we contribute to the rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure built at such sacrifice by our parents and grandparents?  And will we properly fund education, so our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have many of the same advantages we enjoyed?

Our generation has the education, knowledge, experience and resources to accomplish great things and to achieve a legacy comparable to “The Greatest Generation.”

But, although I’m hopeful about our generation’s legacy.  I’m not optimistic.

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.