America’s Burgeoning Homeless Demographic & The Ongoing Economic Crisis

Subject: The growing effects of the American social economic crisis on the American populace.

In light of what has transpired with the American economy over the past year (bank failures and all), many United States citizens are waiting for government to make everything better, and in the meantime to help them to stay on their feet. This is what happens when American citizens and corporations are overly-dependent upon the American Idol, a god that has failed to take care of the needs of all of its citizenry.

And out of this manmade crises emerges America's latest class of citizens, the homeless class. Many are still employed, some are underemployed, and still some have recently become unemployed. There are families as well as individuals (male and female), that are homeless.

According to a recent report by the General Accounting Office in Washington DC, there are also 50 million Americans (at least) without healthcare insurance using last year's figures. One has to wonder about the number of Americans that have been added to the roles of the uninsured given the number of American citizens that have recently been laid off, down-sized or furloughed.

The senior population depends on the government to continue sending checks and to provide them with health care services regardless of the current economic downturn.

And, eleven and a half percent of the working population in the largest state in the union, California, are unemployed; and an even larger percentage of Californian's have been forced to take time off from work without pay. They have been given an ultimatum to either take time off or to be laid off from work.

It is even more dramatic when you keep in mind that 1 out of every 7 Americans is a California, so what happens in California, the most populace state in the Union, does not stay in California, it effects the entire nation

The President’s new stimulus package, that was expected to jumpstart the economy, hasn’t had the desired effect that everyone, except Republicans, would have hoped that it would have had by now. And day after day even more bad news keeps coming down the pike from different parts of the nation, especially from state and local governments, corporations, banks and in addition to everything else that has gone wrong price of gasoline is rising again.

So what is going to happen to America and the American people, for at times it seems as if America is shutting down? The number of homeless individuals and families continues to rise daily, as Americans continue to be dispossessed from their homes.

Many working people and formerly working people simply cannot afford to pay their monthly mortgages or rent. Some are watching their life savings, retirement and investment programs diminish or disappear altogether.

My question is what will happen to the homeless population of America, and what can be done about this displaced and growing demographic? Will shrinking federal and state aid coupled with help from churches and other 501C3 organizations be enough to help meet the needs of homeless Americans and until conditions improve, if conditions improve?

I have listed a few proposals that could help to solve America's current economic woes, the American people could do the following:
• Close its borders - no more immigrants (Pat Buchanan's idea)
• Ban Imports (The New Project for the American Century's (NPAC) idea)
• Export all aliens (From the white conservative’s wish list)
• Send black people back to Africa (again?) (Well, a lot of people would like ...)
• With the next stimulus package, send 5-figured checks directly to American citizens
• Put the Republicans in charge again (hee hee hee)
• Redistribute income (take from the wealthy and give to everybody else)
• Pray (The religious idea)
• Start a new war let's say with the DPRK
• Deport conservative Republicans (An idea that I have often flirted with - but like America's enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, what country in their right mind would take in American Republican conservatives)?
• And finally, America could get into the real 21st Century world, adapt to the new world order and learn to function within the newly emerging global world-wide economy.

America and Americans also need to make the internal structural changes that should have been made when the colonists arrived roughly 400 years ago: America needs to come to grips with its historical ‘we are the world and the buck stops here’ mentality.

My last statement does actually have a double meaning. Americans have been spoiled for so long and they really do believe that the bucks, from all over the world, should stop here and inure to the benefit of Americans. However, things have changed given that the emerging global economy has something to say about when and where the bucks will be stopping from hereon.

Now back to America's religious population that is comprised primarily of professing Christians, and I do mean professing Christians, for their actions often say otherwise. The lack of sincerity from the 'say one thing and do another American Christian majority' is one of the major causes for America's current economic woes, its racial and political polarization, as well as the economic disparity that has persisted between America's different social groups and classes.

Many religious groups and religious individuals have been arguing that prayer is the answer to the problem, and that the only thing that the American people need to do is to pray to God, then the problem would be solved. This combination of religious individuals and religious groups would likely be surprised to hear a Reverend ask, what good would prayer do?

For after all weren't these the same folks that concluded, after praying 9 years ago, that George H.W. Bush should have been elected president of the United States?

Ironically, when the crises heightened, following the invasion of Iraq, wasn’t it the same born again, I pray each day President George H.W. Bush who encouraged the citizens of the American consumer driven economy to spend instead of praying?

Who was Bush praying too? Isn’t it written in the Canon, that obedience is actually better than sacrifice (or prayer perhaps)?

The Americans who want everyone to pray for a solution have been some of the most egregious violators of the most inviolate principles of their own sacred texts. There is no need to pray for a new solution folks because the answer was provided thousands of years ago, many Americans have simply ignored it. In fact not even religious folks adhered to the message.

If religious Americans would have simply adhered to what is recorded in their most holy writ, America would not have become a greedy consumer driven nation, permitted Corporate America to have gotten out of hand or allowed an impoverished permanent underclass to have been born or thrived within America’s borders.

If religious people pray, they will receive the same message that they were given before and did not care to hear, if ‘my people’ who are called by my name, would humble themselves and pray, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways... For after all isn’t that what is written in the Canon? And clearly Christian Americans from the inception of this nation have been unwilling to turn from their wicked ways, but all the time they kept right on praying!

Greedy macro-economic religious Americans, including Christians and other religious groups have been willing participants in America's uneven, greed and consumer driven economy; they are also the one’s who most of all should be doing the right thing and setting an example for other Americans; and thank you Spike Lee for that borrowed phraseology!

So again, if the greedy American religious community would simply do what they are supposed to be doing, just do it baby, I believe that the problems that Americans are currently experiencing would disappear along with a lot of other social problems that have plagued this nation since its inception and even before. In America, what has always mattered the most it would seem, is garnering wealth!

There has been and still is sufficient wealth being generated in this nation to provide an opportunity for all Americans to earn a reasonable standard of living without the all too frequent downturns that have plagued our economy. The manner in which America’s wealth has been garnered, concentrated in the hands of the few and unevenly distributed is a major source of America's problem.

You know, God is apparently not dumb, crazy, stupid or intellectually lazy. God knows that the average greedy American is only concerned about the current crises given the impact that it is having on their individual lives. God knows that as soon as the crisis is over, that the average praying religious American will return to spending, consuming and business profiteering as usual.

The majority of Americans are not ready to make the real systemic and structural changes that need to be made within the country, or within them.

Factually, this country does not have to be in the self-made financial crises that it finds itself in, for this crises was values driven (the wrong values) and needlessly self-inflicted.

Think back to when the crises began, who did some government officials and American citizens blame the crisis on, especially Republicans? Answer, first off they blamed black American home-buyers (who they tried to exploit) for causing the problem. Afterwards, it was those pesky Democrats, democratic policies and finally former Democratic President Bill Clinton who had been out of office for a decade that they placed the blame upon.

And if past behavior is a predictor of future behavior, this is nothing new for after all who have Republicans historically blamed in the past for everything else that was not to their liking? Answer, historically, they have blamed everything on liberal Democrats and minorities. I am so glad that I am not a Democrat, because Democrats must get tired of being called liberal and blamed for everything that goes wrong in this nation, especially when the problems can often be traced back to the Republicans.

But it was not lost on the American voter that Republicans refused to accept responsibility for all of the screw ups that occurred during 'the 8-year George H.W. Bush reign of domestic and world-wide terror'. Along with his partners-in-crime, the six year Republican controlled Bush rubber-stamp Congress and the Supreme Court, all worked together in order to wreak havoc on the American people and the world.

You know, there is something far worse than being called a liberal Democrat anyway, just think what it would be like to be called a Republicat or a Republican Neo-fascist? It was the Republicans who had been practicing fascism over the eight year period that George Bush was in the White House.

Bush, Cheney, Condi, Browny (of you are doing a good job Hurricane Katrina fame), Rumsfool and the other Republican Party cabinet members took approximately 8 years to bring this country nearly to its collective economic knees. And if John McCain had been elected to office in 2008, he would have finished this country off by continuing mostly with what former President Bush and company had already started. He would have repeated the same behavior while expecting a different result as the old saying goes!

And what is this group of would-be cellmates, I mean former officials doing now? This same group of disgraced individuals that remain atop the American economic food chain after screwing up this nation and isolating America in the court of world-wide opinion, are living it up!

Cheney, who I affectionately refer to as Curly (after the former 3 Stooges character Curly) has moved into his newly built ultra-modern suburban Maryland home while the soldiers that he and Bush ordered overseas are still overseas mostly. Condi returned to Stanford only to be grilled by Stanford students for her stake in Bush's venal hegemonic foreign policy in the Middle-East and the world. She got so upset with one student that she even pointed her finger in her face, when she was being challenged about the Bush policies.

Condi is cute (hmm baby), but she ain’t that smart, and it would appear. One could only wonder what would happen to baseball if she became Baseball Commissioner, steroid users can you say rendition or GITMO?

And the rest of the Bushtanistas who left Washington, the nation and the rest of the world in recession after enriching themselves and their own economic demographic, continue to do what they did when they were in office; they continue to 'spend and spin' and propagate their lies and misdirection! We should rename the Republican Party 'the spend and spin party'!

Most of these people are still in denial and refuse to accept any responsibility for America’s current economic crisis. Instead, they persist in pointing fingers in every other direction but their own.

Besides, they have to have time and cover, in order to spend all of the extra cash that Bush helped them to acquire during his 8-years in office. And, while they are busy partying, the rest of the nation continues to struggle to make ends meet (and to undo the mess that was left behind by Republicans).

You know, that Republican deportation idea that I mentioned before, is sounding better and better all the time!

Let’s face it Americans, particularly those Americans who were seduced by American Republican greed and lies are just as responsible for America's current economic debacle as there Republicans pied-piper leaders were responsible.

Sadly, even foreigners who migrate to this nation typically did so in order to make money; and some of them are just as greedy as some other Americans. Once upon a time the people who immigrated to this country, claimed to have done so in order to garner freedom. But what many of them actually meant was that they came here to obtain the freedom to make a whole lot of money.

And much like rank and file Republicans, when the Bushtanistas came to power, many Americans joined along with them and sang their theme song: We’re In The Money!

And some of them continue to sing, many of America’s homeless (including the nouveau poor who recently joined the ranks of the homeless) are waiting for the government to come up with a solution to their problem while they continue to depend on government, church and other (501C3) subsidized and supported program handouts to keep them going.

Just how long can the current trend continue, given that the system is about to implode? Most Federal, State, Local governments and 501C3 organizations are smarting? Factually, the current scenario cannot go on for too much longer, and I have a few suggestions for America's growing homeless population. I will go into detail and explain what I believe that America’s growing population needs to do for itself in order to solve ‘their problem’, next!

And let me add one other caveat before closing for now. I do not believe that the solution for America's uninsured is to provide everyone who does not have insurance with health insurance. America needs to address the systemic causes that have led to America’s health care problem. Treating the symptoms will only last for so long

And before I close, you can add one more person to the list of homeless Americans, add the Values Party Republican Governor of South Carolina, Governor Mike Sanford to the list, man that woman's hips must have been something else!

Peace & Grace
Rev. C. Solomon

To be continued…

Addenda: I learned from a San Jose California city official recently, that there are at least 7,000 known homeless citizens in the area. It is believed that the number is much larger, and the number of homeless citizens continues to increase daily.