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Economic Casualties Pile Into Tent Cities
PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. - Jim Marshall recalls everything about that beautiful fall day.
Kevin Shutt, 53, moved into a tent city near St. Petersburg, Fla., in March. He was laid off from his job waiting tables and then was kicked out of his apartment.(photo: Rod E. Millington for USA TODAY) The
temperature was about 70 degrees on Nov. 19, the sky was "totally
blue," and the laughter from a martini bar drifted into the St.
Petersburg park where Marshall, 39, sat contemplating his first day of
homelessness.
"I was thinking, 'That was me at one point,' " he says of the revelers. "Now I'm thinking, 'Where am I going to sleep tonight? Where do I eat? Where do I shower?' "
The unemployed Detroit autoworker moved to Florida last year hoping he'd have better luck finding a job. He didn't, and he spent three months sleeping on sidewalks before landing in a tent city in Pinellas County, north of St. Petersburg, on Feb. 26.
Marshall is among a growing number of the economic homeless, a term for those newly displaced by layoffs, foreclosures or other financial troubles caused by the recession. They differ from the chronic homeless, the longtime street residents who often suffer from mental illness, drug abuse or alcoholism.
For the economic homeless, the American ideal that education and hard work lead to a comfortable middle-class life has slipped out of reach. They're packing into motels, parking lots and tent cities, alternately distressed and hopeful, searching for work and praying their fortunes will change.
"My parents always taught me to work hard in school, graduate high school, go to college, get a degree and you'll do fine. You'll do better than your parents' generation," Marshall says. "I did all those things. ... For a while, I did have that good life, but nowadays that's not the reality."
Tent cities and shelters from California to Massachusetts report growing demand from the newly homeless. The National Alliance to End Homelessness predicted in January that the recession would force 1.5 million more people into homelessness over the next two years. Already, "tens of thousands" have lost their homes, Alliance President Nan Roman says.
The $1.5 billion in new federal stimulus funds for homelessness prevention will help people pay rent, utility bills, moving costs or security deposits, she says, but it won't be enough.
"We're hearing from shelter providers that the shelters are overflowing, filled to capacity," says Ellen Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness. "The number of families on the streets has dramatically increased."
'A change in the population'
Pinellas Hope, the tent city run by Catholic Charities here since December 2007, has been largely for the chronically homeless, some of whom suffer from mental illness or struggle with drugs or alcohol.
About 20% of its 240 residents became homeless recently because of the economic downturn, says Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg.
"We're seeing a change in the population. ... We're seeing a lot more that are just plain losing their jobs and their homes," says Sheila Lopez, chief operating officer of the charity. "A lot are either job-ready or working but have lost their home because they were laid off, or their apartment, and now can't go to work because they're not shaven, they're not clean, they're living in a car, or they're living on the street."
The charity plans to expand the tent city and build an encampment in a neighboring county, an idea that has drawn objections from nearby homeowners and businesses.
Communities elsewhere are facing similar pressures:
- In Massachusetts, a record number of homeless families need emergency shelter, says Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. In mid-April, there were 2,763 families in shelters, including 655 in motels because the shelters were full, an increase of 36% since July, she says.
"We have a high number of foreclosure properties, and many of them are multifamily apartments," Frost says. "We were seeing a great number of families being displaced."
- Reno officials shut down a tent city in October after making more shelter space available, but new encampments are popping up along the Truckee River and elsewhere, says Kelly Marschall of the Reno Area Alliance for the Homeless.
The homeless include "a startling number of first-time homeless," she says. "We asked them what industries they were involved in. The majority were talking about construction, the housing industry, real estate. There was a direct correlation to the housing market crash."
- In Santa Barbara, Calif., 84 men and women sleep in their cars, trucks or recreational vehicles in 17 parking lots around the city, says Jason Johnson with the New Beginnings Counseling Center, which runs the RV Safe Parking Program. The city, which allows the use of three municipal lots at night, supports the program, says city parking superintendent Victor Garza. Last May, there were 58 participants and no waiting list. Now 40 people are waiting.
"People's last refuge has become their vehicle," Johnson says.
Objections by residents
Pinellas Hope in Florida looks like a cookie-cutter subdivision, except that the orderly rows are of tents, not houses. Besides 250 tents, all of similar size, shape and color, there are 15 wooden sheds, 6 feet by 8 feet, that Catholic Charities built as shelters.
The charity plans to reduce the number of tents to 150 and erect 100 sheds, which are more durable, and build as many as 80 permanent studio apartments on the property, Murphy says.
His group also wants to open a campground for 240 homeless people in neighboring Hillsborough County, he says, primarily using wooden sheds.
Unlike Pinellas Hope, which doesn't border residential neighborhoods, the Hillsborough County parcel is across the street from a tidy 325-home subdivision called East Lake Park. There, opponents of the tent city have a website: www.stoptentcity.com.
Hal and Cindy Hart are raising three grandchildren in their home on the lake. The kids, 4 to 13, fish for bass, ride their bikes to friends' houses and attend neighborhood parties.
The Harts fear that large numbers of homeless people, some with addictions and criminal backgrounds, would loiter in the neighborhood. "We will not be able to let our grandchildren ride their bikes outside without constant supervision," says Hal Hart, 52, a paralegal.
The Harts agree that the homeless population needs services, but they think the emphasis should be on programs that will help families, not single adults.
Murphy says the diocese wants to address the neighbors' concerns and has lowered the number of proposed occupants from 500.
'A temporary situation'
Pinellas Hope, which has a waiting list of about 150 people, is attracting a growing stream of homeless men, women and couples. Families with children are sent to area shelters.
New arrivals must agree to rules, such as not using drugs or alcohol, and perform chores, Lopez says. They get mats, sleeping bags, toiletries, flip-flops for showers and lockable boxes in their tents to store valuables. Within one week, they must make a plan describing how they will work their way out of homelessness.
Residents are expected to move on within five months, but some stay longer. Campers have access to trailers with bathrooms, showers, computers, washers and dryers and a room of donated clothes. They get a free bus pass the first month and advice on writing résumés.
By day, some leave camp to look for work or ride the bus to pass the time. Others stay, watching TV in large communal tents, doing laundry or playing Monopoly. At night, an off-duty police officer patrols the camp, which is governed by curfews: 10:30 p.m. on weeknights and midnight Fridays and Saturdays.
The camp bustles at dinnertime, when everyone gathers for a hot meal provided by churches and other organizations.
A year ago, there were 5,500 homeless people in Pinellas County, says St. Petersburg police officer Richard Linkiewicz, a homeless-outreach officer. This year, there are 7,500, including 1,300 children in homeless families, he says.
Many of the newly homeless worked in construction, a booming industry in Florida before the economic bust, he says.
David Grondin, 48, moved in on Feb. 7 and stayed for two months. A union carpenter, he graduated from the University of South Florida in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in fine arts.
He struggled as carpentry work and odd jobs disappeared. When his 1992 Saturn died in August, he could no longer get to jobs far from public transportation routes.
Frustrated by his inability to find a job in Florida, last month Grondin took a bus to Portland, Maine, where he's staying with friends and looking for carpentry work. "I was definitely middle class," he says. "I had a car. I got a paycheck every week."
Kevin Shutt, 53, moved into Pinellas Hope in March after he was laid off from his job waiting tables because diners "stopped coming through the doors," he says.
Shutt has decorated his tent with house plants, including a ficus tree his mother gave him nearly 30 years ago, and pinned Tampa Bay Rays and Buccaneers jerseys to the inside walls.
He tearfully recounts how he got kicked out of his apartment by a roommate when he couldn't come up with the rent. A former homeowner who made Caesar salads tableside at restaurants, now he can't get a job at Taco Bell, he says. "This is the first time in my life I ever dreamed about living in a tent," he says.
An optimist by nature, Shutt vows that his stay will be short. He has filled out more than 175 job applications and occasionally works for a friend doing canvas work on boats. "This is a temporary situation," he says.
A diminished outlook
Marshall, the former autoworker, has an associate's degree in electronic engineering and is less encouraged.
He remembers a comfortable life in Michigan, where he worked in automotive testing, owned a brick ranch-style home, made up to $50,000 a year and played in softball leagues.
Companies he worked for started losing contracts a few years ago, and eventually the work dried up, he says. He sold his house and moved into an apartment, but by 2007 he couldn't pay the rent.
He came to Florida in August, thinking the job market was better. But he couldn't pay the rent here, either.
At Pinellas Hope, Marshall searches online job sites or takes the bus to apply for work at McDonald's, factories and Wal-Mart. He gets $45 a week selling his blood plasma.
"I have my résumé online. I go door to door. I make phone calls," he says. "I have not received one phone call, one e-mail. I thought with my experience and my degree, it wouldn't be this difficult."
Marshall feels ill at ease in the camp and has trouble sleeping, and not just because of the armadillos that burrow under his tent. "I'm scared," he says. "If I can't find a job, where do I go next?"
At this point, he has lowered his expectations. "I don't expect ever to make $50,000 a year working in the auto industry, but just enough to survive, have my own place, buy my own food, my own clothes," he says. "What every American would expect."
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Show AllCicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Note how the still comfortable pooh-pooh the formerly comfortable and newly homeless: That's Amurka 2009 through and through. Snub, classify, divide, condescend, create more outcasts then target them as undesirables. Even the prejudice against single homeless people vs. homeless families.
Fifteen Dimocrats recently crossed the aisle to vote mit der Republikanischers to kill legislation that would have allowed 1.7 million Americans struggling to pay mortgages to keep their homes and thereby preserved $300 Billion dollars in home equity. Oboreo publicly stated his support for the bill to allow judges to lower mortgage payments, but wouldn't lower his "New Dimocrat" self to actively lobby for it in Congress. With Dimocratic "friends" like this, who needs enemies?
If the more credible economists are right, this is just a mere trickle preceding a coming deluge of homelessness. I shudder to think at how long Amurkans will turn against each other and suffer in agony before it occurs to enough of them to start to organize some haircuts for the upper-class.
yeah, and what happened to all that TARP money again? Wasn't that money supposed to get people working again? Right, I almost forgot, It paid for financial industry 'bonuses' Some people have no shame, or morals for that matter...
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The bonuses were just a fraction of 2% of the TARP money which has had little or no oversight on how it has been spent. Lending actually went down in the first months after the first round of "bail-out" give-aways.
I believe we are seeing the culmination of a Right-wing think-tank planned "business coup" (a more comprehensively systematic version of the business coup attempted in the 1930s) that has taken 30 years to unfold. This coup's originally Republican goals have been aided and abetted, either mindfully or for recklessly mercenary motives, by right-wing corporatist Dimocrats at every step. The purpose of this coup is to absolutely concentrate economic and political power away from a deliberately (and they hope permanently) gutted middle class. I lay out the steps thusly:
1) The gradual legalization of small scale to large scale usury starting in the late '70s: From payday lenders charging up to 126% interest to credit card companies that reset interest rates, penalties and fees at will with no limits and no prior warning and who assert this as a unique contractual right.
2) The CED (Committee for Economic Development) corporatizing U.S. farming beginning in the 1980s: Shoving former family farm workers and medium-sized business farm workers (local, previously permanent resident hired hands) into urban areas to look for work, depressing wages, thereby preventing them from politically uniting into populist movements with industrial workers by converting most former farm workers into urban or suburban service wage workers, encouraging the use of more sub-minimum wage illegal alien workers for the corporate agri-giants to further depress wages and working conditions. Collectivization of farm land away from families and any remaining sense of land-based commonwealth and into the hands of a few giant corporations. For more information on the CED see:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0906-02.htm
3) Corporate collectivization of news media platforms--book publishing, local radio, broadcast, cable and satellite subscription TV, newspapers, magazines, internet news services, etc., away from smaller family owned and regional medium-sized enterprises and into the hands of a very few gigantic parent corporations. Prior to 1980 there were well over 40 different media companies controlling roughly 95% of all U.S. media. Now there are basically five (5) cross-platform media giants controlling the same percentage.
4) So-called "free trade" treaties like GATT, WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, etc., offshoring our middle-class industrial jobs: Kicking former industrial workers and their families out of the middle-class into the service wage job sector--further preventing any political organization of former farm workers and industrial workers and directly undermining industrial unions along with industrial jobs. This deliberate expulsion of so many farm workers and industry workers from the middle-class created a negative economic ripple effect (for everyone but the upper-class) by lowering tax revenues, worsening public schools, worsening conditions in municipally subsidized hospitals that provide emergency room care to the public, worsening food and drug safety and other public services and encouraging the government to begin to borrow more from foreign lenders--beginning the conversion of the U.S. from the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation.
4) Eliminating the barrier between the investment banks and traditional banks created by the New Deal era Glass-Steagal Act; deregulating securities derivatives, futures, etc., allowing the Fed to pour fuel on the resulting speculation fire with artificially low interest rates for a decade.
5) Deregulating the FDIC (eliminating its previous requirement for banks to help adequately capitalize it with annual payments), allowing mortgage trade instruments ("financialized" debt swaps), eliminating the pre-2004 12-to-one investment bank leverage limit, eliminating the requirement for investment banks to keep on-hand reserves as the first break-fall for failed speculations, staging an investment banker coup and blaming it on "lack of liquidity" instead of INSOLVENCY. Getting administration cronies to extort an unprecedented short-term transfer of wealth to the richest 1% by demanding a "bank bailout" lest there be havoc in the streets and martial law: Crush the working class, the working poor and the "under-class" and leave them at the "mercy" of the very same fraudulent capitalists who rigged the housing market bubble in the first place.
6) Deliberately refuse to order or enact a moratorium on home foreclosures; refuse to pass legislation to allow judges to reduce mortgage payments to more affordable levels for struggling home buyers. Destroy individual homeowner equity and concentrate assets in the hands of a few giant banks who are still "too big to fail" according to their government and Big Media puppets.
Did I leave out anything?
7) The dismantling of public schools. This has been accomplished through the voucher system,and through "no child left behind" and its increasingly burdensome testing requirements. The combination of schools that dont teach kids how to think and the effects of our mass media have had a huge effect on the ability of the middle class to "read and react" to the siphoning off of our countries'resources.
So what. Every is good as long as the bankers get their bonuses.
So what? Everything is good as long as the bankers get their bonuses. We are all under the thumb of the Money Masters.
19 million empty homes held on to by the bankers until prices increase, or being torn down because its cheaper to rip apart a home and fill a landfill with the ripped apart lumber, then it is to maintain it.
Capitalism is a collective insanity. If an alien came to earth and saw people sleeping in the streets and tents as millions of homes sat empty, said alien would think we were absolutely nuts as a species.
Meanwhile another 200 billion being spent to blow people up in Afghanistan and destroy homes and families in Pakistan.
This to keep these people sleeping in tents......safe.
>>Note how the still comfortable pooh-pooh the formerly comfortable and newly homeless: That's Amurka 2009 through and through. Snub, classify, divide, condescend, create more outcasts then target them as undesirables. Even the prejudice against single homeless people vs. homeless families
Absolutely true. This "awakening" to what is going on should have happened decades ago. Instead the people bought into the "They are lazy, drug addicts and alchoholics so deserve what they get".
It so very interesting that the people who have lost jobs are feeling more SHAME then those billionaire bankers looting the economy and paying themselves bonuses.
It demonstrates clearly how people have been conditioned over the years. From birth to death the vast majority told if they fail it their own fault while that priveleged few are told "you deserve the best of, and the most of everything".
Meanwhile the poor masses fawn over the details of what Paris Hilton is doing or watch some show like "lifestyles of the Rich and famous" while telling themself THAT will one day be them.
Like the value of a paper dollar, it all an illusion.
GwNorth
This society is modeled on the Roman Slave Republic before Sulla. EXCLUSION is the only thing White America understands. First you make a victim, then you blame them. White America loves the degradation of millions. They feast on it. It tells them how "chosen" they are. Until it's their turn on Master's Pig Wheel. Like a Swift and Armor slaughterhouse, "Nothing left but the squeal." Then it's "just awful".
White America wants to grow up, take possession of a White Breeding Female, and get a dowry of 200 human slaves so they can live like Tommy J. (that's Jefferson) and fuck a 14yo Black girl all day long...while writing brilliant words of glowing prose, "We hold these truths to be self-evident...all humans are born to be my slaves, unless I don't need them, then they are just supposed to go away and die."
As American as genocide and human slavery.
>>
As American as genocide and human slavery.
<<
Yup. Mom, apple pie, baseball, the flag, genocide and human slavery. Keep those myths and lies coming, and under no circumstances read anything by Howard Zinn.
The homeless are the underclass of America. They go in and out of a revolving door to prison or the streets in various phases. The economically homeless aren't that much different from the mentally ill homeless. They will all meld into one class after awhile. It's America's shame that we do not have the charity to provide the services that the homeless need for they need much more than a home. Some need employment; some need a caseworker. They all need social workers or other forms of human help. "Here have a home" is rarely enough. The problems go much deeper than the form of abode. At the very least socially sanctioned tent cities with sanitary facilities ought to be provided, but many Americans are dead set against these prefering to have their policemen tell the homeless to "move along."
Good observations. I fine the suggestion in this article that ther are "worthy" and "unworthy" homeless to be a bit repugnant. Subject a person to the humiliation of unemployment and homelessness for a long enough period and they will become chronically unemployable too.
Why would corporations employ Americans when they can get Ph.D.s in China, Egypt, Indonesian, Russia, etc. for $20,000 per year?
Nature returns shelter, food, clothing for mental and physical effort...
Man requires money...
I've been houseless. There are two kinds of people in that situation. And one question quickly indicates what type one might be looking at. "How long have you been homeless?" And if the answer is a couple years or less empathy may be right. If the answer is some form of years and years, they MAY be putting themselves there by choice. Alcohol the most commonly visibly destroyer/choice.
A local shelter has evolved in my community. The best I've ever seen. But I've been appalled seeing that a majority of the recipients of the kindness do Zero to improve their lives over a period of years. 1 out of 3 are critical exceptions to that. But 2 out of 3 seem only to want to "get over" and "get paid" (get a check from the government) and get drunk.
These career homeless will utelize most services the "economic" homeless might temporarily need quite badly.....
I was houseless, (twice, after losing a home I was buying and after a near-fatal bicycle accident)
But NEVER homeless,
Because home is where the heart is
And my heart beats in my chest.
"I don't expect ever to make $50,000 a year working in the auto industry, but just enough to survive, have my own place, buy my own food, my own clothes," he says. "What every American would expect."
Hooray! From the perspective of employers, such attitudes are splendid news! Put this man's above remarks on a bunch of paper slips and throw them (Abbie Hoffman style) onto the NYSE trading floor, and watch the market jump!
Ans watch what the "market's" glee do when news of the EFCA's demise hits the trading floor!
From the article:
"Marshall is among a growing number of the economic homeless, a term for those newly displaced by layoffs, foreclosures or other financial troubles caused by the recession. They differ from the chronic homeless, the longtime street residents who often suffer from mental illness, drug abuse or alcoholism."
Notice the source of this familiar trope: USA Today, owned by media Goliath Gannett. Ever diligent in furtherance of its class interests, it frames issues with the intent to divide and manipulate us against each other, hoping to prevent our uniting in pursuit of common goals.
Whether one has been homeless for a day or for a thousand matters not; the causes may differ, but our needs are the same. A truly charitable and humane nation would recognize this fact, and its policies would reflect it.
"I was definitely middle class," he says. "I had a car. I got a paycheck every week."
Is this what passes for middle class now? a paycheck every week and a car?
that sounds like a pretty good cut off point. the working poor can not afford to keep a car on the road. With insurance and repairs and traffic violation costs etc...
gotta take the bus to walmart to get that 8 bucks an hour.
Bit off-topic, but it would sure be nice to break this connection between owning a car and economic status. In particular, the stigma of using the bus to get to work need to be removed. Whre I live, 50% of downtown workers take the bus, but the other 50% drive - mostly for no other reason but a racism-tinged attitude toward bus riders.
The days when I worked where I didn't need to drive were very nice ones. I didn't have to scrape the windsheild or dig a car out for 6 years.
Anyone working paycheck to paycheck, and I don't care if its a one hundred thousand dollar a year paycheck, is working class. Anyone who is in trouble if he or she misses a couple paychecks is working class. This whole "middle class" mentality is mostly an illusion. You might have a "middle class" income as long as you keep your job, but if you are in trouble when you lose that job you are NOT "middle class".
I used to say that anyone who works for a living had to be crazy to vote republican. Thats still true. But one also has to be crazy to vote for a democrat. Whats the difference? Look at Pennsylvania. Arlen Specter switched parties because he felt he'd lose the next Republican Primary. Yet, the democrats seem overjoyed to take him in just so they can say they have a democrat in the Senate. If the deomcrats had any guts they'd tell him to take a hike. If they had any guts they'd come up with a candidate that could beat him in the Democratic Primary. So, the next Senatorial election in Pennsylvania will be between a republican and a republican... or is it between a democrat and a democrat... I can't tell the difference. The only thing I do know is that the candidates do not have YOUR interest at heart.
"My parents always taught me to work hard in school, graduate high school, go to college, get a degree and you'll do fine. You'll do better than your parents' generation," Marshall says. "I did all those things. ... For a while, I did have that good life, but nowadays that's not the reality."
And Obysmal will NOT save you.
What we are experiencing is the result of Phil Gramm and George W Bush turning bankers into banksters in 2001 when worthless credit default swaps ponzi scheme was under a trillion, the legislation these crooks pushed through Congress made all manner of crimes possible in investments and banking and today credit default swaps has grown to over 62 trillion. It has nothing to do with subprime mortgages which today is less than 1 trillion. FOR CHRIST SAKE THEY COULD HAVE PAID OFF EVERY SINGLE MORTGAGE OF ANY KIND IN THE USA FOR LESS THAN 8 TRILLION!!
And now with Obama all we have is a complete disregard for the welfare of the people of the United States and a continuation of the policy of handing over vast amounts of money to banks with no actual bottom line and enforced conditions, just public lies about what is actually going on. WE ARE NOT EXPERIENCING A RECESSION THIS IS A PONZI SCHEME AND OBAMA IS NOT STOPPING IT OR CORRECTING LAWS OR DOING ANYTHING BUT EFFECTIVELY CONTINUING IT!!
LOOK AT GAS PRICES DOUBLE OR TRIPLE WHAT THEY SHOULD BE BASED UPON THE PRICE OF OIL AND OBAMA IS DOING NOTHING!!
Obama by rights and by law should have taken over the banks and had their boards replaced and called for a nationwide halt to all foreclosures whilst we go about the process of changing the rules to save people and businesses from the results of a 62 trillion dollar ponzi scheme. The bankster crooks should get NOTHING other than investigated for fraud. We have people who have lost their retirements and Obama is doing NOTHING to bail them out after working in top jobs their entire lives they will now NOT BE ABLE TO RETIRE ***EVER***!!
Now we have tent cities of homeless people in the richest nation in the world! And the god forsaken republicons want to cut back spending NOW!! after they spent us 20 trillion in the hole for nothing but a mass murdering Hitlerian nightmare!
What they are doing is destroying our country! We are not in a recession WAKE UP PEOPLE!!
This is not a recession it is what happens when the US government effectively and totally abrogates it's responsibilities to the people and completes the process of becoming a criminal organization of bribed zombie politicians working for neo-mobster organizations like the banksters.
I largely agree with most of your assessment. But lets be clear, there was an actual recession, but the business elites have cleverly manipulated it to lock-in HUGE gains in power over the worker.
Ironically, an economic recovery at this point would be a disaster for workers. It will be a "recovery" built on mass working class robbery, busted unions, defeat of EFCA, and a deeply indebted public sector permanently disabled from ever providing the social-wage benefits of a real social democracy.
Sorry about offering the "worse, the better" alternative, but only a further deepening to a full-blown depression could save us now, and that is looking very unlikely.
THE HUGE GAINS IN POWER OVER THE WORKER? Just as idiotic as the trash USA today puts out which this article basically said "everything is real there are no crimes and everyone should take a vastly reduced 'american standard' of living". Is USA today just a psyop people pay for to have their brains washed?
They have no power, most businesses in the usa are now suffering as a result of the banksters sitting back and refusing to lend whilst the crooks in the government hand over more money then they have made in profit over the past 30 years combined in banking.
The economic powerhouse called the United States requires well paid "workers" or it will just be DESTROYED! DON"T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT??? The USA was built on the wealth of a vast middle class. The middle class is the engine of our economic success both in terms of innovation and work product and the size of our market. But if the middle class is destroyed THE BUSINESSES WON'T HAVE A MARKET TO SELL THEIR OVER PRICED GOODS!! They don't benefit by destroying worker rights or wealth. TOYOTA PAYS IT'S NON UNION WORKERS BETTER THAN GM CROOKS DO! The problem is george bush sold out to big oil and made all the auto manufacturers halt innovation in products that would get the USA off of oil entirely! The problem is we have bribed crooks running this 14 trillion dollar economic powerhouse!
Why do so many "leftists" just repeat the propaganda nonsense of the fascists in one form or the other?
This is OUR MONEY! This is OUR COUNTRY! We can sit back and let the lying thieving politicians steal it or we can take action. If they STEAL it they won't have anything because the USA will become worthless, it will be destroyed as a direct result of the crimes they are committing. What does it take for people to wake up and realize what is going on? We have a great country that is worth defending.
The main point I was making is that we are suffering the results of a major crime. The economy is not undergoing normal cyclical retractions at all. We are all the victims of a major banking scam and the crooks are not only getting by with it but they are getting paid additional trillions by the crooked politicians.
We don't need to shut our lives down and move into TENTS! we need to shut them down and move them into jail cells!
The crime is called Capitalism.
What you, Mr. petit-bourgeois, (aka "small businessman") are calling a "crime" is simply what workers have known about and lived under for the past couple hundred years. The only difference is that the real monsters created by capitalism - called "Large Corporations" especially the FIRE monsters in their great downtown towers, are simply gotten so ravenous that they are now eating the smaller members of their own species.
If you now want to make common cause with the workers against these monsters, that fine - as long as you support the the right to organize (EFCA) and Single Payer.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To Mr. Stirling:
Things are a good deal more complicated than that. Greed and an entrenched elite class economic mindset of winner-take-all capitalism that ignores all non-winners in our rigged Amurkan economic game has a way of blinding people, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry lobbies--even to their own longterm interests.
All the big business lobbies promoted the free-trade regime salivating over the prospect of dirt cheap foreign labor with little or no expenses for labor protections or environmental protection. They got what they wished for. Profits soared. Profits also increased 30% from the late 1980s to shortly after the end of the tech bubble due to the increase in American worker productivity from computerization of the workplace. But those profits were never distributed throughout the class structure: They were concentrated in the richest 2% who have seen their incomes increase by over 300% since 1980.
The job and manufacturing plant offshoring of the "free trade" regime and upper-class wealth concentration had already put the middle-class on a long-term cycle of economic attrition before the deregulation of the banks, securities derivatives and the Fed's near decade of artificially lowered interest rates. Piling mass usury, tax cuts for the super-rich during war-time, uncontrolled military spending on illegal adventures in mass murder, globally leveraged fraudulent housing financialization and other gross economic pressures on top of the already weakening middle-class has killed the golden goose that once laid many businesses' egg. That's what they get for getting themselves knocked up with 30 years of right-wing think-tank indoctrination from the scurrilous likes of Rush Limbaugh and his legion of ilk.
Metal: Excellent comments in all of your posts on this article.
Thanks!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
While GM is already pleading for its second "bailout" since January for its North American operation its Chinese operations are expected to see growth of 5 to 10% THIS YEAR ALONE. It has already effected business partnerships with the Chinese company SAIC, has three huge factories in China and is beginning to sell more cars in Asia than North America. They've announced new rounds of layoffs in Amurka. I'll wager their bailout money will go towards more offshoring of U.S. industrial jobs and more Asian car and parts manufacturing partnerships and that the Republican and DLC Dimocratic "leadership" knows all about it.
To claim that Bush II halted U.S. auto industry innovation to make more globally competitive automobiles is laughable. Anyone over 40 knows how old that story is. Japan and Germany began eating our lunch regarding shoddy cars and car parts in the 1970s. Enormous government fleet sales and American appetites for huge gas guzzlers in the era of cheap gas is what kept the GM dinosaur from keeling over 15 years ago.
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I'll wager their bailout money will go towards more offshoring of U.S. industrial jobs and more Asian car and parts manufacturing partnerships and that the Republican and DLC Dimocratic "leadership" knows all about it.
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You will win your wager. The "bailout" money given to GM and Chrysler will simply be used to build overseas operations. Its a total ripoff.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
John McCain's former top economic advisor, Phil Gramm, co-sponsored
the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 repealing the Glass-Steagal Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 further deregulating the investment banks and deregulating securities derivatives so that mortgage securities could be sold into global webs of reselling--each sale separating the loan originators one step further from those responsible for collecting on the loans. Bill Clinton signed them into law urged on by the likes of his Sec. Treasury Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Not Bush II. Bush II was probably too stupid to even understand what was still unfolding under his nose and was just weebled along by his puppeteers. Former Fed Chairman under Bush II Alan Greenspan knew very well what was going on and deserves to have his neck in a noose for supercharging the bubble with years of artificially low interest rates.
Some time in late 2004 or 2005, Hank Paulsen (previously with Goldman Sachs), who was then head of the investment banks' trade association responsible for lobbying on behalf of the investment banks went to the White House and got Team Bush to agree to allow the investment banks to drop their previous requirement to maintain on-hand capital reserves as the first break-fall in case of failed speculation(s). Those billions of dollars of protective reserves were then invested in fraudulent securities packages along with their already pre-existing & obscenely over-leveraged positions. Over 30-to-one leveraging with nothing to break the fall--except struggling Americans' backs. I wouldn't be surprised if the big banks, Fed Chairmen and think tanks planned both the housing bubble and the extorted "bail-outs" 10 or 15 years ago or more. I wonder how much Robert Rubin knew about the "bail-outs" ahead of time and how long ago he knew it. He's sitting phat over at Citi-group last I heard. Greenspan has disappeared into the plutocratic woodwork.
I am trying to construct a time line of these deregulations so if any of you know of specific things Team Bush did between 2001 and 2007 to further the current housing/banking crisis (before Hank Paulsen was made Bush's Sec. Treasury) please add them with sources to this thread. Thanks!
Add to that participation in WTO, NAFTA, and hey! did you hear Obama Adm. is going ahead with pushing CAFTA!
So much for change.
Read Howard Zinn's: "A Peoples History of the United States." This is all the same crap handed to us on a silver platter! History repeats itself over and over again.
This article is excellent and so are all the comments! I believe people are waking up! Good! I myself have formed my philosophy to live by and am attempting to create...."No longer lend yourself to that which you wish to be free from."
This system sucks! Get out of the system! Homelessness is a symptom that could be turned around to the peoples advantage. Ok, you took away my home and livlihood...how can I then live? Well, as "dubet" says....nature will repay in food, shelter, clothing, what we put into her in labor.
I had planned to liquidate all....buy a small plot of land and build a Yurt (Pacific Yurts.com). Sounded simple. Pay for a dwelling place outright...no rent or mortgage payments ever! The problem was buying that little piece of land! Municipalities don't want a "yurt" on their little lots....no tax base. Lowers the value of housing in the area. After all, a Yurt is like a glorified tent! Yes, and it is also rent free! "THEY" will not allow people to live rent free. Too easy. Then, people could grow their own food, trade services with each other, and God forbid....be free of the system! So, seems to me...the "People" need to acquire some land, build yurt communities, sustainable gardens, procure our own water, and live off the grid! This could be the future! Tent cities by preference! Why not?
San Diego's conservative newspaper, the Union-Tribune has on its front page today: "Wall St. looks on bright side". It says housing is +3.2%, construction is +0.3%, the S&P 500 is +3.5% and Warren Buffett says he sees the end to the economic slide. What a snow job we're being fed.
And, coincidentally, all who now claim the economy will magically recover 'soon,' or 'this year,' all happen to pinpoint the timing 'round Christmas.
They're so cute when they're lying through their f@#king teeth...
The problem with the bonuses at AIG is that it is modern American business standard operating procedure.
1. Get yours jack.
2. Fire workers, outsource, beat up suppliers to cut SHORT term costs.
3. When you are caught in your total incompetence blame others and up your bribes to politicians.
4. Collect your golden parachute and move to trash the next company.
AIG executives bankrupted the company in a business with no physical product and minimal required facilities. Any asshole can make a company go broke. Only the wealthy can get extra cash for doing it.
If and when the economy recovers it will be against the current bunch of managers. The Walmart system is nearly over - they will collapse or they will have to find a way to operate while paying a living wage and a fair price to suppliers. They will crash very hard from a high point as management deceives stockholders with tricks to hide the first part of their collapse ala ENRON.
Where are the good representatives of God?
In the homes and churches, preying on the sick and lonely. Yes, I wrote "preying."
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I remember back when the Newtzis were storming to power in Congress in the early '90s the American Catholic Bishops spoke out loudly condemning the effects of "New Republican" Newt's and "New Democrat" Clinton's "welfare reform" on families and children. But since then, regarding the growing numbers of Americans who have been and are being impoverished, and the astronomic disparities in income between the economic super elite and the rest of us, America's Christian churches have been sadly disorganized and effectively silent. While the Bush-Cheney terror junta was enthroned and post-911 jingoism was all the rage the churches could plead that they were avoiding any backlash from daring to criticize a (then, popular) war-time president. But that cover was stripped by November 2006 and they don't even have a flimsy excuse for their silence on the economic chasm now. They are yet another of our national disgraces.
hoytdouglas, "Where are the good represantives of God?" Easy-
The church nearest me has free dinners for anyone weekly,
The nearest homeless shelter 25 volunteers averaging 20 hours a week each to feed, assist & shelter 50/60 homeless. 1/2 Christians, 1/2 varied spiritual orientations.
Downtown SF, Homeless? Glide Memorial Church, has served millions of free meals & sheltered tens of thousands, Mostly Women & Children as Christ instructed.
ANY homeless shelter, ANY soup kitchen, ANY food bank and Christians. THE largest single identifiable group physically handing hungry people food in America. By Far! Right this very second in fact. Thousands of Christians in America are serving free breakfasts to homeless people on the eastern seabord this second.
Where are the Good Christians ? They abound. Praying quietly & serving the hungry as Christ instructed, they're not in Afghanistan w/ machine guns peddling Bibles in Pashtun.
To Truth and Love, joe, cali.
Those people who fell through the rents in the safety net during the last "correction", I was one of them, have known for a long time that this was coming. But our voices have been very faint and feeble, easily shouted down. We have been waiting.
Only when there is a critical mass of "respectable" middle class suddenly experiencing what the people they have been ignoring have experienced will there be voices loud enough to be heard. That is how it worked for my grandparents in the 30s, it was not the mentally ill, alcoholic or physically disabled who created unions and fought for fair working standards, it was the healthy and hard working breadwinners of that generation who stood up and roared.
It's been a long time coming. Where I live the government slashed welfare rolls by 40% in one year, early nineties. Some of those people who were turfed off have been waiting on the street corners for over a decade, some are waiting no longer because they are dead.
I look forward to a new revolution.
I hope one of those tents has a doctor.
The article does nothing to encourage readers to employ these people.
All those whining people in neighboring communities needing work around their house could use someone to fix up their house; they can't afford the Contractor who has to pay ALL the expenses attached to running a business and passes that off to their customers. (They lost big time in stocks and retirement)
The author made sure to mention the few loudmouths poo-poo'ing tent city, but not the fact that these very people have the skills they may need.
Now that I think again, the reason must be that no taxes will be paid, no insurance will be bought, it will be a cash transaction. We can't promote that, so the USA Today leaves that out of their paper!
amen
Ah, but looking at the bright side, we no longer need to fear "falling into the trap of welfare dependency" (unless we're rich/a corporation).