War on Homeless - Many Questions

I am sick to my stomach to see all these headlines in the news about the homeless people in so many cities and towns being arrested for being who they are.

Like it or not, most people are one or two paychecks from being in the same situation.  Ask yourself this, how long before you would be out on the street if you were fired from your job?

How long would your savings last?

It good and heartwarming to see the people of Portland taking a stand for those less fortunate.

http://intellihub.com/portland-residents-protect-homeless-police-pitchforks-torches/

When will this madness end?  When will those in power realize that we all have rights?

Why is it so easy to pick on the homeless?

What crime have these poor people committed?  What have they done wrong?  Did they negotioate the trade deals like NAFTA that shipped millions of jobs to Mexico?

Did they choose to have the call centers for mega corporations like Comcast/Kabletown located in the Phillipines?

Did they choose to make all the clothing in Pakistan or Vietnam?

No they did not, that is called capitalism?  or should I say GREED of the 1%

Did they choose to have all their manufactured goods in China?

Where are the picket lines to protest all these corporations to force them to get their products in made in the USA?

I never say always or never, but I could probably guess that most homeless do not like to be in the situation they are in.  Is this the case for all of them?

Probably not.

Take a look around, is food getting cheaper?

Is gas getting less expensive?

How is that unemployment number doing?  If you like real statistics, then the real number is about 24%.  That is almost a quarter of the population who wants a job, cannot get one.  That number does not include the vast amount of people who have plain given up on finding a job.  There is nothing out there, unless you count being in "sales", which is always a possibility, except that many people do not have the money for discretionary spending.

Unless we start making things again in this country we are screwed.  We need to make things again.  How do we make that happen?  I am sure the 1% have the answers to that.

I went on a cross country drive a couple of years ago, as I was traveling, I would go from town to town, and see the same sadness, the same desperation, the same small towns hanging on by the slimmest of threads, and I would also see the abandoned factories, farms, small business, that cried for help, and no one is listening.

Our leaders in Washington are so caught up in their own shenanigans, that they literally cannot see the forest through the trees.  They are so busy lining their pockets with corruptible cash, they are blind to the despair this country is facing.  It is so sad, we were great, once.

One Man, One Voice..Many Questions....

Dear Internet,
As one man, one father, one human resource in the vast wasteland that is becoming the new America, I would like to share my thoughts and feelings on where we have been, where we are, and where I feel we are going. I am rambling a bit today, forgive me.

Are we Exceptional?

I know at one time we were, to say that now, is disingenuous at best. I heard the President say that his first duty is to keep us safe. That is not true. His first duty is to "protect and defend the constitution of the United States".  If he did that one thing well, then everything else would fall into place.

 Just a few seconds ago I came across this article about the government crushing dissent.  That sums up what is happening to the Constitution in a nutshell.  This makes me sick to my stomach.  There are millions of people who have come to this country for the express right to voice dissent, and it appears that there is an active movement to destroy anyone who voices a different opinion.

Freedom? 

When are little blogs like mine going to be illegal?  I fear in the not too distant future, anyone who protests will be thrown in jail.  Our founding fathers would be terrorists in today's world. The leaders of this country are trying and succeeding in the old tactic of "divide and conquer", and quite frankly it is tearing us apart.  When the government attacks and jails journalists for doing their jobs, there is no turning back.  The recent release of "Mediastan" proves that point exactly.  The fact that newspapers will not print stories that might get the government upset is maddening and sad.  Corporate owned journalism is dead.  Do the owners and editors of those once prized institutions really wonder why their readership is down?  In those offices and cubicles they know, they know exactly why they cant sell papers anymore.  They don't want to admit it, but they know that they are just a mouthpiece for government. 

Chuck Todd would rather be at a party having cocktails with the elites in government than reporting anything that would piss them off.  The fourth estate has been sold to the White House, lock, stock, and barrel.

Military?

How can we have a budget that is so overloaded with military spending and spying while we ignore the needs of the people?  I did not vote to assassinate American citizens without a trial.  How can anyone with a conscience believe it is right to do so? Where has our humanity gone?

Whistleblowers?

Edward Snowden exposed something that many people already knew was happening and brought sunlight to the lies and illegal activities of two agencies, the NSA and CIA. These two arms of the government have too much power.

I cannot get "exceptional" out of my head today.

I heard the President tell us while ago that we are "exceptional." Do you really believe that?

Are we exceptional when we kill thousands of innocent woman and children in the name of "peace?"

Are we exceptional when we invade countries to rape them of their resources for our corporate masters?

Are we exceptional when we throw thousands of people in jail with no charges and hold them in isolation until their brains are scrambled?

Are we exceptional when there are millions of children in this country who go to bed every night hungry?

Are we exceptional when we put traveling checkpoints up just to harass innocent people all in the name of security?

Are we exceptional when we spy on millions of innocent people, capture the emails and phone calls of everyone in the hope of catching a terrorist?

Are we exceptional when we tap the phones the foreign leaders?

Are we exceptional when we tell the people of other countries to protest their governments for change, then we go and arrest those who are protesting here in this country?

Are we exceptional when our own police routinely beat up innocent people then when they are recorded doing so, throw those people in jail for exposing injustice?

Are we exceptional when whistle blowers who expose corruption are treated like the very criminals they are outing?

Are we exceptional when the top 1% control a vast majority of the wealth?

Are we exceptional because the lines at soup kitchens and homeless shelters are exploding at an alarming rate?

There are many questions here that need to be answered.  Do I for one second think I have all the answers?  Nope.  Is there room for change and discussion on many topics of concern? I think so.

I am not naive, I am well aware that there is evil in the world, and there are people who want to hurt us.  We should be very careful when we are trying to protect the people.  The indiscriminate killing of innocent women and children across the globe is going to come back and haunt us, for that I am sure.  When you decide to launch missiles and wipe out villages all to kill one person, you are going down a path of destruction that is most dangerous.  The little girl of today, who loses a mother, father, and brother will be the woman in 20 years that will dedicate her life to hurting us.

The amazing documentary "Dirty Wars" exposes the secret wars across the globe that will only hurt us in the long run. That is not a threat, it is a fact. The fact that Obama picked up the phone, and personally called the leader of Yemen, and told him to keep Abdulelah Haider Shaye in prison because he would expose the killing of women and children is beyond contempt.

 The job that the  mainstream media is doing is so pitiful and disgraceful, that finally, some people are waking up and seeing the crap they feed us as just that, CRAP.

The struggles that I see on a daily basis is staggering.  The lines outside the soup kitchen appears to get longer every day.  What is going to happen when all the human resources wake up and see the world for what it is?

Part One- What is wrong?

As Gitmo Gils sits at his desk (yes, he is in the "third person" phase again) He wallows and contemplates what is wrong, what can we do, is there any hope?

In this ongoing conversation, this is Part One. 

What is wrong?

Alas, where to begin? 
Lets start at the quasi local level. I am employed in a field of work that does not pay a lot. I am a caregiver, I am a friend, I am a voice for those unfortunate to not have one. But more importantly, I am a protector, I keep 3 people very safe, very secure and do my best to give them the best that this life can offer. What I do is not most financially rewarding job, nor is it the worst. I have been doing this for over 25 years, and as of the last two performance reviews, I am very, very, good at it.  I can honestly say that the days that I have left work with that "great day" feeling have been the ones where one of my guys, has accomplished something new.  Whether that is figuring out how to call his parents, or building some absolutely amazing structures out of Leggo's , or making a bed my himself, the feeling of a job well done has nothing to do with the amount of money on my paycheck.  


Sadly, that "great day" feeling does not pay the bills, or put gas in the car.  I have thought long and hard about changing my field of work. I did for a few years. I worked for a nursing agency as their computer guy. I loved teaching. One of my responsibilities was training nurses, Physical Therapists, and Occupational Therapists how to use a computer, and the medical software on that PC.  I was so good at my job, I was eliminated when the budget was tightened, and they did not need my services anymore. I knew then end was coming when the phone listing came out, and my name was noticeably absent.  The IT director to her credit, pushed for the agency to keep me in their fold, but in today's world bean counters win.

Now we go back to the fall of 2008, when the "Masters of the Universe" on Wall Street and all their crony banksters were going to lose everything. What happened? The let us slaves pay for it all. Did we get a vote? nope. What was the line that EVERY COMPROMISED MAINSTREAM OUTLET REPORTED?  " Too Big To Fail" that lie was told over and over until many believed it was the truth. If you do not believe me, watch this movie, The Academy Award winning Documentary "Inside Job"

They bailed out each other, gave each other bonuses for screwing all of us, it was sickening, and if you don't think that this country is heading in that direction again, take your blinders off. Out of that major screwing we took, there cam the "Occupy" movement. That grew so much, and became a force to reckon with. So much so that the banksters wanted to hire the FBI to have snipers kill the leaders of the Occupy movement.

Maybe you see where I am heading in this mild prose about my employment history.  There is no money.  There is a gigantic hole somewhere, where if you listen to some, over $60,000,000,000,000 has vanished from the world.  There is a giant sucking sound, and all those greenbacks are flowing there. Trying to figure out "where" that is, well, that is the $60 Trillion dollar question.

Many, including myself would like out leaders in government to be more accountable for their actions, and for how they are spending our money.  When ever a Congressman or Senator questions the Federal Reserve, and demands an audit, they are quickly hushed up and pushed aside. Just ask Ron Paul.

I have always made the analogy to friends that the United States intervention in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the money spent there is almost akin to my friends giving me 28% of their paycheck from here on.  They can do it for a while, but after some time, it is going to affect them in every aspect of their life. The little things in life are going to become more of an expense, and so on.  Folks, that is whats happening to our country. We are being bled dry by a national security state, that is quite frankly, out of fucking control.  We as a people have no concept of the vast amounts of money being spent on our "security".  

As I look at my sub headline on this blog, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither", it makes me come to the realization that it has never been more true than what is going on around us these days. We as a people have made the decision that liberty is gone, and a police state is in full force.  The NSA and who the hell know who else, is spying on us, every second of the day. We have various government agencies who are basically at war with each other to get a bigger piece of the pie, and there is no end in sight.  

 If you can't figure out by now that we have been bamboozled and most of all distracted from what is of real importance, then I really do pity you.  You do the math. 30 Million kids in this country go to sleep hungry every night. Go into every store in this country and look where the products are made. 101 Million people rely on food stamps of one sort or another every month.  The actual unemployment number is 23%, not that 8% that is reported by the govt.

But the most telling thing that you cannot ignore is right in front of your face at the grocery store.  Have you noticed how much smaller the containers are for all goods?  That 1/2 gallon of Beyer's ice cream is now 46 oz. This is done by the food companies to try to keep inflation from being noticed by distracted citizenry.  I myself happen to be a Ritz Cracker freak. One year ago a regular box of Ritz was 16 oz. The box I have in my pantry right now, is 13.7 oz, and it costs more, than the 16 oz. box from a year ago.

We have a compromised media that sucks at the teat of big government and will not report on anything of importance.  They will offer up a few sacrificial lambs from time to time, but anything that we NEED to know, that is covered over and evidence destroyed.  When more people care about who wins American Idol than they do about warrant less wiretaps, police corruption, government graft, illegal spying on citizens, then we have truly lost. Lost our way, lost our money, lost our souls, lost our liberty.

The last time I could remember one person actually making a difference for the good was Dr. Martin Luther King. And we do know what happened to him. Like James Earl Ray, and Lee Harvey Oswald, if you think that these men acted alone, well, you are an idiot. J Edgar Hoover had been secretly spying on King, for many years. Of course that only came out after any "real" investigation. 

The forces of evil are so intertwined with the government, and big corporations, that it is going to take an exorcism to eradicate and destroy them. There are so many people in office who only want to get the biggest paycheck, the most power possible.  This is not some conspiratorial rant, this is fact.  In future posts, I will do my best to expose the true evil that I see.  

One of my starting home pages is the contact page for the White House.  I write a letter to the President every day.  Some are good letters, those are rare. Most are critical of what I see, but more importantly what I feel when I am out and about. If everyone who feels this way felt compelled to write their congressman, their senator, or the President everyday, we could make a difference. These elites in power do listen, when they are bombarded with letters from constituents.

 There is not the optimism that I felt in the 90's during the Clinton years.  I feel this general morose, this feeling of apathy, and despair.  This is not some imaginative creation that I made up, I am not that good. That's how it is. 

In the small city where I live, I see more and more homeless people on the street.  My heart goes out to them.  I was coming out of a store on Thursday, and there was a man with a small child standing outside with a sign. He had no job, no home.  The look on the little boys face was of pure desperation and grief about their situation.  I put what I could in the cup the boy was holding, he gave me a nod of thanks. What happened next absolutely shook me to the core.  The man I work for is autistic and mentally retarded.  He asked me if he could put money in the cup to " help that boy" and "could they come live with us?"  I gave RT another bill to give the boy. He put the money in the cup and we walked to my car. I was sitting next to a man who was born with his disability, and he cares about those who are more fortunate in one sense, and less fortunate in another. The other "normal" people who just walked by them, doing their best to ignore and pretend they were not there, I pity them.

  We sat there and watched as many, many more people walked past that man and boy without giving them a thought. Without even a glance in their direction. Those that did look at them, quickly looked away. 

 How much different this country could be if more people cared about those less fortunate than themselves.

Just imagine a world where the 1% actually cared about the country and wanted to see the other 99% of the people prosper as well as they did.  I know, there I go, dreaming again.

These are just observations by me. I do research, probably not as much as I should, but I look into things, and they are scary. There is injustice everywhere, and that is how they like it. Divide and conquer is a concept that the government and media have been using quite successfully for a while.  They keep us distracted on matters that in the end, will never be solved, just to keep us looking away from things that truly do matter. 

There are many things I see happening now around the country, that when I was a kid my dad would say "that only happens in Russia".  I see videos of brutal police tactics on innocent citizens. I see martial law enacted for tracking down one person. I see people exercising their right to free speech being arrested for that free speech. I see people asking questions to power, silenced and arrested, for asking a question.

There are times that I wonder what gets me more frustrated. The fact that people just don't care, or they don't want to care. I see it every day, their heads are buried in the sand, and soooo easily distracted.  But the sheer amount of apathy is very disconcerting.  There are so many documentaries on YouTube, that if they were shown on "network" television,  it would wake up enough people to maybe make a difference. 

  I was at meeting with a friend last night, and she is a owner and operator of a business that provides care to people with TBI ( Traumatic Brain Injury).  There is a movement afoot to cut the funding to those families in need of care by 40% by the state politicians. This problem flows upwards, when the local government has no money, that is a problem that flows up to the state level of governing. When the state level of government has no money, that flows up to the national level of government.

  This might be a basic way of trying to explain a very complex situation, but I will give it a shot.  According to "the cost of war"   Since 2001 we have spent $4,000,000,000,000 to kill brown people for oil.  If we took that money and invested in teachers, schools, infrastructure, construction, manufacturing, in this country, I can almost guarantee that we would be better off. Can you imagine how much better of each state would be with an extra $6.6 BILLION dollars flowing in every year?  Think about that one for a second. President Eisenhower warned us many years ago about the military industrial complex, and what would happen when they were out of control. It has happened.

If you have any questions or comments, I would like to read them. 





Gitmo Gil.

Part 2 - Coming soon- What can we do? or, What we can do?

I know there are good ones... but, WTF is going on here?

Toledo is a crazy town, this cop is out of control.

I awoke this morning to the heartwarming story of Glen James.  He is the homeless man who turned in a backpack with over $40,000 in cash and traveler's checks.  As of this writing there is over $92,000 in a fund set up by Ethan Whittington.  Call me jaded, call me a cynic, but I believe that the person who lost this backpack was better off having it found by a homeless person rather than the police.

I am reminded of the story of Ritchie Roberts.  He was the police officer who found almost $1 million dollars in the trunk of a car. When he turned in ALL the money he was ostracized, ridiculed, ignored, and look at by his fellow officers as a "bad guy". Why, you ask?
Many police officers believe that they do a thankless job, work ungodly hours for little pay, and get no recognition for their duty.  Ritchie Roberts' partner wanted his "taste" of the money.  He held a grudge against Ritchie for the rest of his life.  Many other police officers all made it clear that they would not work with him, he was too honest.  That says it all.  I know for a fact that there are many great police officers who try their best to do the right thing. Sadly, there are many who really do believe that if they come across undocumented cash, they deserve their taste.

In the end, it really is better that a homeless man found the backpack.