Yikes!  The site has been taken over by Trickle-Downers, Inc.

Bummer!

Due to the loss of any opportunity to work as a farm laborer, and the decline of
manufacturing jobs in the US, those with intellectual disabilities have been
cornered into a no win situation. Fortunately the SSI has come to their aid and
have provided them with a livable allowance plus Medicaid eligibility.

It’s going to get a lot worse.

Here’s an excerpt from Chris Hedges’ EMPIRE OF ILLUSION:

“The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.”

Poverty pimps are everywhere, most are politicians, they are always inflating the
misery of those that depend on government handouts, it is their favorite excuse to
raise taxes. Church leaders are also in on the scam, billions are given to them for
the cost of opening up cheaply run soup kitchens. In reality those that are counted
as poor live as well as most of the middle class, combined benefits for a single
welfare recipient are over 40 thousand dollars annually. Those that are obsessed
with the misery of the poor should increase their medication, because it is all in
the imagination.

Not to worry.  Sixty-dollar video games are good for your brains. Your kids, too.  Keep ‘em glued to the faux world and they’ll never ask to know any inconvenient truths about glutonous Amerika and why “they” all hate us.

Sorry—-that was to read “one out of six Americans lives in poverty,” but my fingers were too angry to get it right.

It’s not really news that there are so many poor in America. It’s a fact constantly mentioned in the media, and constantly ignored by the unaffected populace. So, six out of seven Americans lives in poverty. That’s not the sick part. The sick part is that the other six couldn’t care less.

A person can starve to death in his or her own home, and the neighbors will say how sorry they are and how shameful it is. Not one of them lifted a hand to help, though. Not one of them will care past the time it takes to go on to some other topic. It doesn’t matter unless it happens to you, and if that time comes, you will join the throng of faceless, anonymous souls in this country who are slowly and steadily being denied more and more of what it takes to remain alive.

If it happens to you, you will join the ranks of unpersons, those Americans that the Republican Machine fervently wishes would hurry up and die, so they can quit wasting tax money on them that could be shunted off to the obscenely wealthy.

We have only ourselves to depend on—and if we allow corporate operatives to steal all the assets, manage all our resources including our government and information services and, in the process, refuse to run the economy for the benefit of the masses of middle class and poor people for whom they are directly responsible—well, it’s time for a change.
  Can we let go of useless behavior such as kvetching and fighting with each other? Do we want to cooperate with others, look ahead, plan together for the long-term benefit of our children? Most important—will we commit to deep understanding of effective, consistent nonviolent political action as the only practical solution? Are we willing to experiment, to keep human values always on sight, to learn and to teach?  Do we have the courage and intelligence to persevere?
  Some people have already begun. Will you join them?
They are in great need of your help.

bpawk

So you’re a Reaganite? People are homeless and desitute because they want to be. You can only blame the victim so long before you have to start looking at why there are so many victims. The (capitalist) deck is stacked against the underprivledged from the starting line. As we all know, it is far easier to succeed when you have all the advantages before the rat race even starts.

When you look back with 20/20 hindsight, you can almost see when the working class should have noticed the train coming. But the wealthy had already taken over the media, so the selling out of america could take place under the cover of media imposed darkness (Hell, I even remember when flunkies in the Reagan and Clinton years telling us that moving jobs overseas will be “good for america”)

Yes people borrowed too much against future prosperity, but how would the working class be doing if their jobs weren’t moved overseas? See, we can all play the woulda, coulda, shoulda game.

My wife and I live a pretty good life on about 70 thousand a year. But in the last five years our medical insurance has doubled in price (and covers less) Groceries, cars, utilites, everything has risen dramatically in price. And neither one of us has had a raise in salary in two years. All things being equal, how much longer will it be before people in our class are living in poverty?

You should have know (there it is again) things were going to be bad for a long time when Allstate put out a commercial early this year saying that, during these trying economic times, people are getting used to the simpler things in life again. Little did we know, corporate america considers food, clothing, and shelter as the little things.

cry me a river!

You deserve everything you get - you said nothing when the jobs left for China and India, you said nothing when rich individuals/corporations got so many bailouts/subsidies/inducements and everyone else got the scraps, you over-spent and leveraged your homes until you were so bloated with debt that in the event of a meltdown or crisis ...

you only have yourself to blame!