I meant to write"we just missed it (Great Depression) in 2008” not 2006.

We have very big problems in this country. The old ways are not working.

“WAKE UP PEOPLE!” - JOIN THE REVOLUTION
Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://www.revolution2.osixs.org )

FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM
We don’t have to live like this anymore. “Spread the News”

Gil, we are in a Great Recession (Depression) but if the oligarchs have their way we will be in a Great Depression. We just missed it by that much in 2006. But next time around they may not be able to do it and the oligarchs will call the tune. They will be the ‘last man standing’ and will take over to “save us” from barbarism. Or so they will say.

@Hollywood Russ ... Russell thank you so much for your kind words. I completely understand what you are going through. It happens to all of us at one point or another. I could tell you some real whoppers, but not here This is not the venue for that right now.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have family, extended family, and friends. I have many people watching out for me (and my daughter who is also disabled with the same cluster of issues). I can not tell you how many homeless people, and indigent people I see on the streets or meet when I am tooling around in my wheelchair/scooter, who are panhandling because the can not survive on their SSI check alone. These gaunt, dejected people are often the nicest and most caring people I have ever met. When I am out and about they often look our for me and make sure that I get home safe, yet these are the same people everyone scorns and make jokes about. In the past year or so, most of them have disappeared and I fear they have died off, though a new group is beginning to show up since the last cuts in June. The ones that have disappeared were so thin and so sick, and the last few winters have been so hard, I am sure some did not make it. It is difficult not knowing what has happened to them, especially the senior citizens.

Anyway, I sent Robert Scheer a note yesterday with a copy of my post requesting that he or someone pay attention to this despicable and ignored situation.

PS: I forgot to mention the most craven aspect of cities not only setting police on these hundreds of (mostly) youngish people, but sitting back and hoping that severe weather will cause them to “go away” because they lose spirit and enthusiasm, or weaken physically.  What a cheap way to evade their responsibility and pretend innocence:  “Oh, it got too cold for them.  They left. We didn’t throw them out. They left of their own accord.”

That is so far from the spirit that built this country that it’s hard to admit what has happened to our souls.

With all due respect to Connie Rice for even raising the question:  ““How had we allowed sociopaths to twist a child into a robotic killer?” Rice asks.”

The sad fact is that sociopaths don’t usually recognize the fact, nor think of themselves, as “sociopaths.”  They think they are doing the right thing. 

Here we are, citizens of a nation unable or unwilling to take care of its poorest people—in fact haven’t even got the common community spirit to figure out a way to feed and house our own young people who are camping in tents in the rain and snow,voluntarily trying to help decide what to do about our failed economy and our failing country! No think tanks? No community centers?  No university gyms and dorms?  No host families?  Don’t talk about socio-paths!

http://youtu.be/thOYSryplII

short film about OWS and why it should not be marginalized

We, the white middle class, are in our current condition because we ignored these ‘others’ - they were expendable. We allowed an expendable class. We did not examine the concept of ‘expendability’. Now we find some of ‘us’
expendable, many of us know some of the ‘expendables’, are related to them. Maybe now we’ll wake up - if it’s not too late.

At last count, there are 50 thousand homeless here in
LA.  40% of them are women and children.  Many of them
are Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans. 

How about renting some buses and busing them to the
streets of Beverley and Rodeo.  They’d certainly be
noticed and noticeable, otherwise, who knew.

Connie Rice is a brilliant if mercurial figure.  No one is better at showing the monstrous double standard used by this country in its treatment of gang violence against minorities—“if it were happening in white neighborhoods this country would have a Marshall Plan”—and you can hear the contralto rage in her voice, but she has tendency to lob her bombs and run.  You listen to her and think “Great, now what”?

The neighborhoods she cares so much about would profit greatly if she were less reticent to be a public figure.  Jesus H. Christ, imagine if she were mayor.

I also see a danger in conflating minority violence with poverty.  South L.A. is far from the bottom income-wise, and most gangbangers round out lower middle-class households—they’ve got your average West Virginian beat to hell.

An Alternative to Capitalism (if the people knew
about it, they would demand it)

Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed:
“There is no alternative”. She was referring to
capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still
persists.

I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism
for the American people to consider. Please click on
the following link. It will take you to an essay
titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by
the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:

http://evans-
experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm

John Steinsvold

It’s rather funny, but the Khmer Rouge used children to kill adults. Then you have
the children in West Africa who were used as fodder in the war for blood
diamonds. Then I see the PLO teaching children to use automatic rifles to kill.
Maybe the gangs have it right. Instead of trying to teach children history, or
english, or mathematics, we should train them to use assault rifles in order to
keep up with the rest of the world.

First with so many laws that promote violence like the Drug War which figures so prominently in gangs and warfare we need to starve it. Next would be allow sex between consenting adults to be sold freely and legally. Then the people involved have a chance to get police help so sex slavery can be ended there too. Legalize gambling will leave such gangs starving. (Strictly regulated and enforced.) And once we fix the wealth distribution problem we can start helping to destroy the environment that helps to create and keep gangs alive and rich and violent. Do this and the tide these people must fight to keep out of gangs and the use of children as killers who only go to juvenile hall for murder needs to be changed. That and deprogram them from the brainwashing that went on turning them into such heartless killers in the first place.

But if we don’t stop the USA from going into the abyss of a Great Depression, from the Depression (Great Recession) the police state will stop it. Using counter insergency and counter terrorist tactics to slaughter the criminal gangs. Wipe them out with the military power at their command. Now that will be a sad day and the end of what remains of our Republic. This latter scenario is more probable to happen than the former.

BTW- Great article, as usual.

To Lilith:

I too am disabled, but probably not to the extent that you are. Thank you for your
powerful comment. I share your grief. When people see my cane, they immediately
put on a voice that is more appropriate for a conversation with a four year old.
Once society decides that you are “crippled” they want you to stay indoors. In
public we upset children and are over-demanding; that is, we ask to be treated
like anybody else. At least our social security checks will contain our first COL
increase in three years! Woo hoo! An extra fifty cents in my pocket each month.
Where will I spend all that money? Luckily I worked for a company that offered
disability insurance. I bought as much as I could buy and that has kept me from
homelessness and starvation. Lilith, I wish you all the best that the world has to
offer.—Russell

Social policy adjustments, financial regulations, economic reform, closing tax
loopholes, getting rid of the Court’s decision that ‘Corporations are people too’,
etc…only when these things happen will we see REAL change.
http://borderlessnewsandviews.com/category/the-bk-dame-says/

I saw the teaser thinking “Finally, someone has noticed us!”, but of course it was yet again not so. Who is the “us” I am speaking? It is the often very silent, and out of sight population called the disabled poor. Not those who have assets, money and able-bodied family members, but the large population who are mostly, if not completely alone.

Did you know that California alone has cut the cost of living increases to our meager benefits each year for over 20 years in order to balance the state budget and often to cover the cost of tax cuts to the top 1 to 5% wealthiest in the state? Giv. Arnold took that even farther these past two years, he cut back our Food Stamp allotment back to 1982 rates to balance the budget, as well as taking our cost of living once again. The result was that all those receiving SSI in the state are now well below the poverty level.

Did you know that those on SSI are restricted on how much food they can receive each month from Food Banks, and any other non-governmental organization, like family and friends? Until 5 years ago the limit was $6.00 per month. Now it is only $20.00 max you can receive before they start taking it out of your benefits.

Did you know that for those on SSI they are required to report each and every form a gift, including clothing and food,to Social Security so that they can take it out of your benefits. So no birthday, Mother’s or Father’s Day, or Christmas or other holiday gits allowed.

Did you know that Medicare will pay for your Wheelchair but not for a ramp to get out of your house. I asked them about that recently and was told that as far as they were concerned making sure you get to the bathroom and to the kitchen was all they considered a valid “medical need”, nothing else. We would have to find help else where with food shopping, doctor’s appointments, and simply getting out of the house. They do not care that those programs are being cut or eliminated as well.

These rules and regs are in direct violation of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we, the USA, signed! Yet I can not get anyone, congress, nor media to even consider looking at these issues.

So, although I love what the OWS people are doing, I am perfectly aware that when they get what they want, they too will return to the same old behavior of blaming the disabled and aged for their problems, and support the political expediency of cutting our benefits long before their financial resources are touched. It has always been that way, and I have no reason to believe it will change after all this current solidarity.

such good deeds strengthen the system. it is no
wonder that the system allows it or even welcomes
it.
right to life/work/to know; live in a community
free of crime, shld not hinge to any degree on any
individual or herhis goodwill/money, etc.

it is the system that had to have had, in the first
place, preserved such inalienable rights.
it, instead, had these rights systemicly and by now
utterly destroyed for ab. 20% of americans.

so, if we don’t change the system which wld end
waging war for poverty/drug usage, poisoned
food, bad medicine/laws/education,
unemployment, etc., what can a few a good deeds
achieve? feelgood thing for some pols and ceos!
tnx

We have two domestic wars going on that actually benefit thieves and murderers,
          The War on Poor People of Color
          The War on Drugs.
  Stop the war on poor people of color with jobs and affirmative action under a better name, such as “justice for all.”  Include them in instead of making laws and supporting customs that shut them out. This might well start with updated police training to prevent violence instead of assuming its inevitability.
  Stop the war on drugs by legalization and equalizing sentencing where arrest is necessary; that is, level the sentences for different types of cocaine and clean up gun traffic. Stop imprisoning immigrants and those who commit minor offenses related to drug use.
  After the Stops, put a Go on all projects involving school and community integration and training in prevention of violence and pro-oactive nonviolent leadership.
  It’s all there in the “records” but lies fallow due to hype intentionally aimed at creating public fear and avoidance, and by politicians’ gutless irresponsibility.
  Lots of people know all this and are doing as much as they can, but the general public will is weak. That’s the important missing link.  Suggestions?

The high standard of living that so many of us enjoy has lulled us into believing the myth of American supremacy. I read, time and again, the puzzlement of so many whose lives are so much better, regardless of their status in the economic scale, than those in other nations.

Puzzlement as to the anger of so many, puzzlement as to why some work so fervently for change, a change these middle class folks see as unnecessary because they themselves live so well. At times I saw our nation as so rigidly divided into the blind and the poor that I despaired of ever seeing change in my lifetime. 

Now, as is its wont, Capitalism has begun to search for ever more profit, as the oil industry searches for ever more of that shrinking commodity, and finding that profit among the working and middle classes that had been spared the truth of things until now.

Formerly secure jobs have disappeared as ruthless and unpatriotic corporations desert our shores for the cheap labor of third world nations, for those places so desperate for jobs that there are no safety regulations, no environmental restrictions that make manufacture here so seemingly expensive.

As Malcom X once intoned to a deaf population, the “chickens have come home to roost”. As the article states with such brutal frankness we have nine year old hit “men”. I see this as the inevitability of the capitalist system, and, as things will inevitably get worse, so shall many others see as I do.