Pensacola Is Cold in More Than One Way

As the South prepares for another wintertime whammy in the form of cold temps and a blanket of snow and ice, we should note the news from the Pensacola City Council in Florida. The Sunshine State has homeless people, they don’t know why, they just do. Perhaps they are sinners, those who are not the predestined elect, or maybe they have calculated the the cost/benefit ratio of living indoors and have made the market-based decision to experience the great outdoors. Whatever, they are there.

They like to sleep outdoors when they sleep. The City apparently won’t stop them from sleeping outdoors nor provide heated shelters where they could rest their heads at night. Surely the homeless will be thankful they are free from such Government interference. But the City Council has BANNED them from covering up with blankets! Yes, in sweet Pensacola, a homeless person sprawled out in the ice and snow is prohibited by city ordinance from covering up with a blanket.

The City Fathers ( and at least one bitchy old City Mother*) have ordained that blankets are verboten. They don’t like the image it gives to the City. Apparently a frozen homeless person is OK but the blanket is just so unfashionable.

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* Jewel Cannada-Wynn, City Council President

KFC Sells Rat Meat*

Eunice Jasica lost her job last year, and then her home and then her car. She ended up living in a Salvation Army shelter for the homeless in Tupelo, Mississippi. A few weeks ago things started looking up for Eunice when she landed a job at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). That is until the boss learned that she lived in a shelter for the homeless and canceled her job. He fired her before she could start simply because she was homeless. KFC is too classy of a joint to employ a homeless person.

After being besieged by local and national press, the KFC manager changed his mind. He fessed up that he really, really didn’t fire her for being homeless, no he wouldn’t be so crass. No, he fired her because she was 59 years old and thus TOO OLD to work at KFC. Yeah, she was too old, that’s the ticket!

So whether you believe the first story or the second one, think about KFC who either won’t hire a homeless person or won’t hire a 59 year old. I know I am too old to work for KFC so I think I will be too old to buy their decrepit old chicken-like rat meat.

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* Just kidding. KFC doesn’t sell rat meat, it just sells very old, unidentified semi-organic mystery meat which it makes-believes is chicken.

Don’t Do It!

The DISSENTING DEMOCRAT just received another note from a longterm unemployed person contemplating suicide. Having served in a community help center these feelings are far more common than we’d like to believe. I am sharing my message so that others on the brink might stop and think it over.

I know things are bad but there are people in your life who care. And there is something yet you may be able to do. You should talk to someone for counseling and may contact the community mental health center in your city for help. Homelessness is one of the burdens with which we must live in this country. But I know homeless people, I’ve talked with them, and as difficult of a life as they have, there are always reasons to get up and again and try.

I have no more reason to live than you do but I am hanging on for the chance that something somewhere will work out. As it is said of the Lottery, you can’t win it unless you’re in it. So too of life, if you check out it may be just before that perfect job offer, or love affair, or that perfect sunrise, or whatever. I don’t know what life will bring you but unless you’re there, it won’t bring anything. Your odds are better alive than in Vegas, so let it ride.

If nothing else think of it this way, the bastards who are stealing the country blind, sending jobs to slaves in China and enjoying those huge bailout bonuses just don’t give a damn about us. Don’t give them the satisfaction of checking out. If you did, they’d just swill another cognac and puff on their cigars and tell their buddies how we just don’t count. Live on to fight another day.

Think on this as well, it has gotten me thru many a dark night: science says that most suicidal impulses may just be an aberration in your body chemistry. I’d feel myself a fool if I died when I could have had a sandwich.

Tent Cities for the Homeless Grow

The following excerpt from an ABC News story, August 13, 2011, is more informative about the current Depression than any report of statistics and economic data. Homelessness is not the exclusive preserve of the stereotypical hobo or aging drunk, the average American is one job and 6 weeks of savings away from eviction or foreclosure and then but a short jaunt to living out-of-doors. The homeless are are not THEM, they are US.

Marilyn Berenzweig was a successful New York textile designer who loved her work and comfortable lifestyle. For the past year, however, she and her husband have been living in a tent city in the New Jersey woods.

“The weather, the bugs, the dirt; I think it’s the dirt that really gets to me,” she said. “It’s not like you can pop in the shower at the end of the day.

“It’s life on a much more primitive level. … Cooking on a wood stove … having no running water, no electricity.”

Berenzweig, 60, and husband Michael live at Tent City Lakewood, a growing community of 70 homeless people living in a series of tents, shacks, trailers and tepees in a wooded area along the Jersey Shore about 25 miles north of Atlantic City.

When they first lost their home, they tried living with their daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren.

“It didn’t work out … too many clashes of temperament,” she said.

Their son-in-law drove them to the camp 16 months ago. Other than telling their daughter, they’ve kept their whereabouts off Ocean County Parkway a secret from family members.

Berenzweig said she’d first heard about tent cities from her friends.

“A friend of ours had mentioned tent camps earlier, thinking it was disgraceful what this country came to with economics being so bad at the time,” she said.

She never imagined she’d soon be living in one.

Berenzweig and her husband’s makeshift home is a wood-framed shack covered with a tarp and blankets. They’ve created a patio of sorts with blue tarp hanging over a series of plastic chairs and tables. Underneath the tarp are signs of everyday life: a propane fueled stove, dishes, a dictionary, cooking utensils, a coffee mug.

Their patch of land has a chicken coop on it and a wood stove to be used during the harsh winters to stay warm. A shopping cart is full of wood and paper to be burned in the stove.

They brought their cat and birds to live with them, remnants of the life they once had. They’ve adjusted to being labeled homeless, but some parts of having nothing are more difficult to handle.

“It’s kind of hard to take things. It’s hard to be an object of charity,” she said. “That takes some getting used to.”

Berenzweig’s circumstances aren’t unique. The rocky economic recovery and stagnant unemployment rate have led to a surge in the homeless seeking shelter in shanties and tents nationwide, experts say.

The modern-day Hoovervilles have names such as Dignity Village or Pinellas Hope or simply Tent City 1. There’s no official estimate on how many tent cities exist but, experts say, nearly every state has one and the presence of such communities is soaring.

“In just about every major city, there are tent cities,” said Michael Stoop, a community organizer for the National Coalition for the Homeless. “Unfortunately, we’re in a growth industry and the numbers are going to continue.”

Stoop and his organization began formally tracking tent cities in 2010 but the numbers have grown so much that trying to keep a detailed report of every tent city has overwhelmed them.

“Imagine if you had never been homeless before and you’d just lost your job and you lost your home,” he said. “What would you do? Would you immediately go begging or knocking on a door?

“No, you would downsize, move into cheaper accommodations, if that did not work you’d move in with friends or relatives and then you’d move into a cheap motel and then … where would you want to go before winding up at a shelter door? You would much prefer to live at a park with your family and your dog,” he said.

There are more homeless men, women and children in the United States now than during the Great Depression and yet we hear so little about them. If the networks would spend 1/10 of the time they devote the stock market perhaps we could summon the will to do something.

You Can’t Eat “Freedom”

Recently Brazil suffered through massive floods which left thousands homeless.

The people and the government of Brazil decided to build 8000 homes at public expense to accommodate those left homeless by an act of nature. There was no reliance on the marketplace. There was no hem and hawing about the virtues of self-reliance and “freedom” (whatever that is), there was action.

In America, however, we don’t want to infringe upon the freedoms of those who are still homeless from Katrina. So 30,000 wander from shelter to shelter, sleeping in a car one night and in a bus station the next. We do that so the homeless may be free (and also so some very rich people can take their land and turn it into luxury resorts).

Brazil takes care of its people — feeding and sheltering those in need — America takes care of its rich preserves the freedom of its poor.

Right to Housing

Americans are used to “Rights talk” generally as it applies to the so-called Free Market System:

• The Rich have a right to be free from taxation
• Corporations have a right to bribe politicians
• Big Banks have a right to taxpayer funds to cover their gambling losses
• War profiteers have a right to cost-plus no-bid contracts from the Pentagon

It is surprising to learn that much of the world thinks in terms of “rights” as applicable to common people. There is a body of law and literature worldwide which addresses such rights as food, housing and education. Astonishing! Rights for people?

One such right recognized under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the Right to Housing. In a country which founds its social policy on the belief that the homeless choose to be homeless — you know how much they enjoy the freedom of being without a home, it is disconcerting to learn that much of the world think the opposite: that there is a right to be housed.

The United Nations appointed a Special Investigator (Rapporteur) to examine the U.S. housing system. The Rapporteur, Raquel Rolnick, issued her report recently.

Among the findings:

• During the last decade, 170,000 units of public housing have been lost to disrepair and deterioration
• Funding for public housing was cut 25%
• A rise in asthma among children in public housing was attributed to cuts in maintenance
• Minorities are increasingly housed in over-crowded and poorly maintained units
• On any given night 800,000 people are without shelter in the U.S.
• 1.5 million children become homeless at sometime during the year
• Homeless parents lose custody of their children for no other factor than their crime of becoming homeless
• Waiting lists for housing assistance are frequently as long as 5 years

The condition of housing is not an accident. It is not the natural result of the workings of the invisible hand of the marketplace. It is the result of human decision-making. Humans posing as Congressional-critters as well as other policy makers have chosen to devote public resources to Banks, Corporations and foreign wars and to reduce resources available to housing, healthcare and education. We are a much poorer nation as a result.

As we have recently seen, the U.S. Supreme Court is especially concerned to protect the rights of Corporations to participate fully in the political process, supporting candidates, funding campaigns and giving full vent to their propaganda. Wouldn’t it be something if we could devote some of the passion for Civil Rights to the right of a child to have a bed to sleep in under a roof that didn’t leak?

It’s a LIE !!!

Short-haired president comes on every night,

Trys to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;

But when asked how ’bout something to eat

He will answer in a voice so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

My apologies to Joe Hill, the workingman’s songster who penned the original Pie in the Sky song about 100 years ago. Our President is a latter day preacher man hustling Hope as the same sort of Dope that Joe Hill’s evangelists did. Soothing w0rds are the opiate of the television-obsessed masses.

Take the foreclosure crisis. Millions are losing their homes. Supposedly Obama was acting to protect homeowners, remember that?  Indeed, the entire Bankster Bailout was sold to Congress and the public as a means to keep people in their homes. It didn’t. *

The Dissenting Democrat formerly had a guest commentary from someone who had gone through foreclosure, inasmuch as the commentary revealed personal information, the author requested its removal. It was a shocking  cold shower of reality which expunged any accretion of  warmed-over dust on the brain accumulated through hours of politically-correct programming.

The writer’s mortgage bank was CitiBank, one of the hungriest pups on our Bitch-Government’s teat. CitiBank wrote, and White House propaganda releases reiterated that CitiBank was anxious to work with homeowners. Calling CitiBank to engage in negotiation, our hero was told to contact the local foreclosure attorney. Calling the designated law firm, he was then referred to the government-funded Housing Line. The teeny-bopper taking calls on behalf of the County, and funded with Emergency Bailout dollars, didn’t appear to know anything about the foreclosure process. She could not answer a single question and was primarily focused on insisting that the homeowner-in-temp get his act together and move-out expeditiously. The “counseling” service was more of an enforcement agent for the Bank than resource for homeowners.

Now the CitiBank propagandists are publicizing the Bank’s Christmas spirit in implementing a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions until January 17 of the New Year. I checked back with my correspondent to inquire if he got a breather?

No such luck and as should be expected, the “moratorium” was a publicity stunt. CitiBank is on schedule to put the household on the street on January 2 — Happy New Year!  And, I mean, literally, on the street. The County says that it has no resources for our soon-to-be-ex homeowner. Sixteen-year county residency and a lifetime paying taxes in his state of residency do not matter: One County worker suggested he might have more luck if he’d move out of State.

So if you live in Minnesota and happen to pass by an elderly couple surrounded with their household goods and frozen in place, give a wave and a thumb’s up. You see your Government’s policy on health insurance and housing at work.

Now, I know we are told that the good folks in foreclosure are mere deadbeats who have made “bad choices” in life, but the writer in question had owned his house for 16 years. It was the third house he had owned in a lifetime and he had never missed a payment or even been late under three consecutive mortgages. Making the “bad choice” of having a heart attack without health insurance preceded his housing crisis.

CitiBank executives cannot conceive of having a heart attack, they don’t have hearts.

So when our favorite Black Televangelist comes on the tube assuring us that with his plans and programs we’ll get pie-in-the-sky when we die, remember Joe Hill’s choral reply . . . . . “It’s a LIE!!!”

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*  Apart from the BILLIONS in hand-outs for the Banks directly the Government established a $ 75 BILLION loan-modification program to assist distressed homeowners. It was given to the Banks to administer. Of the total amount appropriated ONLY 0.03 % was used. JPMorganChase rejected 85% of those who applied, CitiBank modified 270 loans out of 100,000 applications, and Bank of America accepted 98 of 160,000. At the current rate of foreclosure, one of every seven homeowners will have lost their homes to the Banks by the end of 2010.

 

Collateral Damage in a Free Market Economy

In 1981, St Stephen’s Church opened an emergency shelter in its basement for the homeless. The Church believed that the nation’s and state’s leaders would soon respond to the crisis making its temporary emergency shelter unnecessary. The shelter just marked its 29th anniversary and has dropped the word “emergency” from its name.

It is no longer considered to be a temporary crisis but rather an ongoing circumstance of life in this country, two million people are homeless and of this number about 40% are children. It is no longer deplored, it is accepted. The elite, if they speak of it all, will assure us that “those people” choose to be homeless.

We as a society don’t mean the homeless any harm, it’s just the nature of the business system that some people are expendable, redundant. Anyone who would advocate that extreme poverty should be eradicated is dismissed as impractical and naive. Freedom is our primary concern and our economic system is so structured that the rich and poor are equally free to sleep under bridges and in doorways.

Indeed, “Liberals” pride themselves on their compassion, a liberal unlike a conservative will step over and not on the homeless found sleeping on the sidewalk.

Father Ed Flahavan, former priest at St Stephen’s, wrote in a letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “The tolerance of poverty in this country is a mortal sin”.

But, Father, it’s not personal, it’s just business.