The homeless people on my block are being forced to compete with young professionals for midday squatting rites. The young professionals are attracted by a food service business that sells them gourmet coffee and lunch from a waist-high street-side window. Each working day, they pour onto the block and gather in front of the window from whence they acquire food.

After obtaining food, the young professionals spread out along the block in search of spots suitable for sitting in the sun to eat while talking with friends and associates.  Because there are so many of them, they dominate the scene all along the block. Preoccupied with themselves, they seldom interact with those who do not belong to their demographic. These days, there are thousands of them in the neighborhood during work hours.

They are drawn here by high tech jobs associated with the graphic design segments of the computer industries. Many of the firms they work for are relatively new startups. But the foundations of their emergent, critical mass in this South of market San Francisco neighborhood was provided by the printing, photography, engraving and advertising firms which proliferated in this area prior to the emergence of Silicon Valley.

Many of the old firms have gone out of business over the years. But a surprising number of them evolved with the technology such that during the dot com era this section of town was known as “Multimedia Gulch.”  Young professionals constitute the primary work force for the high tech firms that lease the large, red brick warehouses located throughout this neighborhood.

Most of the warehouses were built as storage facilities during the era when San Francisco was an important seaport. The sailing ships and steamers are long gone, including the longshoremen who worked on them. But the buildings they used remain, including the large warehouses formerly used to store cargo.

These days, the beautiful, old warehouses are being transformed into expensive lofts, chic offices, and conspicuously informal, work sites for young professionals with high tech skills. As indicated above, such employees dominate the neighborhood’s public spaces during working hours. I emphasize the fact that their dominance is largely restricted to working hours because few of them can afford to live here.

Nonetheless, they are clearly well paid. And the quiet confidence they uniformly exude confirms their hope–that they will eventually acquire sufficient financial assets to reside in neighborhoods much nicer than this one.  It is, of course, all a gamble. A similarly smart, hip, confident, demographic flowed in and out of the same restaurants, coffee shops, bars a decade or so or ago as members of the dot com phenomenon.

Within a quarter mile radius of this block, they earned and spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of those who cashed out smartly before the crash, have moved on to nicer neighborhoods. But many remain, and some of them are the employers of the current crop of young professionals. Those who completely missed the dot com gravy train, deserted this scene long ago.

At the end of the workday, and the young professionals have departed, homeless people reoccupy the few spots along the block where the sun is still shining. Some of them use the respite to organize their incredibly full shopping carts. They are much less chatty than the young professionals, and also less prone to congregate in groups.

Many of the homeless people who gather here use the hours after dark to collect cans and bottles from trash containers and dumpsters. Others cop squats in comfortable spots beside buildings to down a few beers, or smoke a bit of weed.

With the arrival of daylight, they crawl out of their ragged, sleeping bags, scramble from cardboard blankets, and move off in anticipation of the arrival of the young professionals. One wonders what will happen to them when the full force of the gentrification tsunami currently transforming neighborhoods such as this one makes it impossible for them to be here, day or night…

San Francisco’s municipal leaders exude considerable pride when they assert that they have removed approximately 8,000 homeless people from the city’s streets during the past six years. Pride is also evident when they discuss the number of homeless people who have been substantially rehabilitated during their watch via municipal assistance.

Several methods were employed over the years to via their sustaind campaign to dramatically reduce the number of homeless people on the city’s streets, including the practice of providing free, one-way bus tickets for homeless people who agreed to be deported in this manner. Between 2004 and 2007, more than 2,500 people were spirited out of the city via this program, which arguably helped San Francisco, but little or nothing to reduce homelessness in the U.S. as a whole.

During the same period, San Francisco provided housing units to an additional 1,531 homeless people. In addition, the mayor’s innovative Homeless Connect program provided opportunities for hundreds of volunteers to get personally involved in delivering much needed support to homeless people. Such accomplishments need to be acknowledged, and appropriately appreciated. Thus, the pride being expressed by many of those most closely associated with the city’s effort to successfully manage the homeless problem is at least partially justified.

Furthermore, it should be acknowledged that Mayor Gavin Newsom risked a great deal when he asserted, upon taking office in 2003, that he looked forward to having the success or failure of his administration tied to his effort to substantially eliminate San Francisco’s massive population of homeless people.

The accomplishments noted above notwithstanding, it seems correspondingly appropriate to note that the Newsom administration’s engagement with homeless people has also engendered unrelenting criticism. For example, even before the Newsom administration took office critics claimed that “Care Not Cash” campaign theme was more threat than promise. That line of criticism expanded as the new administration began to cut welfare benefits to homeless people, and divert the savings to housing for members of that particular segment of the municipal populace. Major controversy continues in government circles, and among homeless advocates, regarding the Community Justice Center recently established in the Tenderloin and other poverty-stricken neighborhoods by the Newsom administration.

The Newsom administration probably deserves additional criticism for the manner in which it collaborated for several years with Bush administration policies and procedures regarding homeless people.  For example, any comprehensive review of that collaboration will quickly reveal that San Francisco was one of the most prominent of the 3,900 U.S. cities that spent much of the last decade being unduly influenced by crass politics, and intentionally inadequate funding priorities, that were more symbolic than substantive.

The key point to be understood is that the Bush administration’s policies regarding homelessness were more of less on par with its discredited pursuits of peace, fiscal sobriety and disaster relief. In other words, the Bush administration’s policies vis-à-vis poor U.S. citizens were consistently devastating for those at the bottom of the U.S. socio-economic pyramid, and that obviously includes those to poor to secure housing for themselves.

In their effort to obtain as much federal financial assistance as possible, San Francisco’s municipal officials bought into, and broadly touted, Bush administration strategies regarding the problem. Thus, primary attention was devoted to getting homeless people off the streets, and out of the sight.

Unfortunately, this approach guaranteed that substantive issues such as the causes of homelessness, the skyrocketing cost of private housing, and the fundamental transformation underway in segments of the job market historically filled by working-class people, would be largely ignored. It also encouraged, the adoption of disjointed, balkanized, difficult to manage, financially chaotic approaches to homeless people and their problems. Moreover, this approach severely inhibited critical public dialogue about the reasons why so many people were being forced into homelessness during one of the most prosperous periods in U.S. history.

One of the most important results here in San Francisco is that invaluable time has been lost in our struggle to categorically reduce the amount of unnecessary human suffering taking place on the streets of this city.  Much has been accomplished during the Newsom years, more certainly than during the tenures in office of his immediate predecessors. Nevertheless, much remains to be done.

Thousands of homeless people still inhabit our streets. The fact that many of them are new arrivals underscores one of the most important shortcomings in the programs and policies pursued during the past few years by the city’s leaders, public and private.

That key shortcoming was the core assumption that removing approximately 3,000 chronic offenders from the streets could essentially eliminate San Francisco’s homeless crisis. The fact that administration officials are currently boasting, after several years of effort, that they have actually removed 8,000 people from the streets highlights their capacity to express hubris in response to an outcome that more modest individuals might reasonably use to issue apologies.

In any event, given the economic meltdown currently underway around the world, there is every good reason to believe that the trickle of homeless people repopulating our streets will expand during the period immediately ahead into a flood of destitute people in desperate need of assistance. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that many of those who end up in this position will be forced to fend for them.

For example, San Francisco, which is one of the nation’s wealthiest cities, is currently facing a $575.6 million budget deficit for next year. That amount is equal to approximately 50 percent of the city’s discretionary spending. The city’s fiscal situation is worse than at any time since the 1930s, and municipal officials are currently implementing massive cuts in services. The proposed cuts include services for mentally ill outpatients and drug addicts, two groups represented in disproportionately high numbers among the homeless.

At things currently stand, assistance from Washington, D.C. constitutes San Francisco’s best possible hope for avoiding the worst possible results of the impending escalation in the size and complexity of its homeless problem. But the Obama administration is currently devoting scant attention to poverty-stricken Americans in general. Any Obama administration plans to significantly expand services to homeless people, are secret at this moment.

Most signs indicate that the administration is intent on saving bankers, financiers, and various, well positioned billionaire plutocrats from experiencing the logical outcomes associated with their excesses. The Obama administration is also taking the steps it considers necessary to shore up middle-class finances and earning power.

It appears that everyone else is going to be left to their own devices. Many of the substantially abandoned souls who end up in this category will manage, somehow, to cobble together sufficient resources to survive, and possibly prosper.  But it is almost certain that many of our fellow citizens are destined during the months immediately ahead to become members of the flood of people being driven into abject poverty and desperate, life threatening homelessness, by macro-economic forces over which they have little or no control.

Here in San Francisco, we are going to need more than premature pride in order to withstand the oncoming flood of homeless people heading for our streets, alleys, parks, promenades and residential doorways.

         The current economic crisis is inexorably tightening the vise of poverty that has been strangling this nation’s poorest citizens for several decades. 

         Ragged, begging homeless people are the most obvious victims of the escalating tragedy of deprivation haunting our cities, towns, suburbs, isolated hamlets and barren, open spaces.

         But there are so many other examples of expanding human deprivation in our midst, that homeless people are largely being ignored.  For example, even though they are far more numerous than the high-paid Wall Street executives who are grumpily agreeing to temporarily accept salaries of only $500 thousand per year, homeless people do not receive anywhere near the same amount of attention, and compassion as the financiers, many of whom, may end up in prison because of participation in improprieties related to the current economic crisis.

          In addition to the growing number of homeless people, there are many other, deeply troubling, signs that the U.S. is experiencing something akin to widespread social and economic collapse. 

         They include the escalating number of people who are losing their homes; the millions who have lost their jobs; those who are about to, or already have, used up their unemployment insurance, the rising number of people who can no longer afford health insurance, and those who couldn’t afford it before the onset of our current economic crisis. 

         Business failures, and individual bankruptcies, are on the rise all over the nation.  And it should not surprise that suicides are also on the rise.  All too frequently, those who take their lives have lost all hope of being able to cope adequately with their escalating financial problems.

         President Barack Obama, who is obviously faced with a steep learning curve regarding the art of exercising real power and influence in Washington, D.C., is clearly finding it more difficult to accomplish real change than he imagined while out on the campaign trail contending for the job against fellow Democrats. 

         His recent, fumbling efforts to secure support from recalcitrant Republicans for his relatively modest stimulus program do not inspire confidence in his future ability to radically reform the nation’s balance of power, or its terribly askew priorities. 

        Moreover, there is little indication that President Obama’s financial stimulus plan will prove to be decisively effective.  It will produce jobs.  But that positive development will probably be offset by a comparable, if not larger, increase in the number of jobs being eliminated due to the financial crisis.  Maybe more troubling is the paucity of new ideas being put forth by the Obama administration.

        The new president is not alone in his confusion.  The truth of the matter is that these days confusion about the financial crisis, and what to do about it, dominates certainty in most U.S. arenas of power.  The hard truth that virtually everyone in Washington’s political establishment seems incapable of understanding, or at least publicly admitting, is that the philosophies of the Democrats and Republicans are largely dysfunctional. 

        As far as the Republicans are concerned, the brand of thinking currently known as “Reaganomics” is clearly obsolete.  If this fact was not made apparent to doubters by voters in the last two national elections, then the current economic crisis should be all the proof any reasonable person needs.   The Bush administration’s orthodox Republican thinking regarding financial matters is significantly responsible for our current financial debacle 

         Those who need additional proof that reality has usurped Republican Party philosophy should ponder the response of its leaders to the Wall Street meltdown.  In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, the Bush administration abandoned longstanding Republican dogma regarding so-called “private enterprise” as if it were a dreaded disease.  And in a philosophy-be-damned panic, the administration fought to give approximately $800 billion to Wall Street.

         Communist Party barons around the world must have permitted themselves broad, knowing, smiles–because they have been practicing the same sort of state-directed fiscal policies for decades.  The crude, ignorance inherent in the Republican Party’s embrace of “government-is-the- problem” dogma was exposed for all to see during the horrific Katrina holocaust.

         As far as the Democratic Party is concerned, proof abounds that its leaders continue to embrace financial dogmas that are no longer pertinent to current reality.  For example, Democrats have controlled the majority of the nation’s major cities for decades.  Therefore, they must accept responsibility for the rampant poverty, and physical deterioration, so clearly apparent in those cities.

         One only needs to consider the hundreds of thousands of city dwellers who are homeless, begging, and sinking into utter despair, to understand the magnitude of the Democratic Party’s failure to come to grips with current economic realities.  The growing jobless rate, and the plummeting housing prices in every metropolitan area in the nation, are further proof that the Democrats are as bereft of good ideas as their essentially clueless Republican counterparts.

         As far as the current economic crisis is concerned, the leaders of both parties are obviously confused as to how to proceed.  Mostly, they are attempting to garner support for ideas and policies that were significantly inadequate long before we entered the current hyper-globalized phase of human endeavors. 

         Furthermore, as indicated by their make-it-up-as-you-go approach to the catastrophic collapse of the automobile industry, few Washington leaders from either party understand the full significance of post-industrialism, and what it portends for nation-based financial philosophies that have remained essentially unchanged for more than half a century. 

         Thus, outmoded thinking increasingly incapacitates our political leaders, Liberals and Conservatives alike.  As a result, and all too often, their efforts to address the nation’s social, political and financial problems are undermined by various manifestations of the malady that the late Alvin Toffler referred to as “Future Shock.”

         I accept the fact that we are stuck with the world as it is, and the leaders we have.  However wrong he was about the War in Iraq, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was correct in his broadly criticized, but minimally understood, comment about going to war with the army you have.  My point is that we are stuck with the leaders we have, and however we proceed toward fundamentally reforming our society, the process will have to be largely accomplished via their participation. 

         Therefore, it is critically important that members of government elevate their comprehension, planning and performance, as quickly as possible.  Accomplishing this will almost certainly require a determined mass movement motivated in its determination to succeed by recognition that our very lives hang in the balance.

We should all be deeply concerned about the conspicuous avoidance practiced by mainstream organs of journalism regarding the rising number of homeless U.S. citizens.  The print and broadcast media devote, it seems, as little attention to the subject as they possibly can.

And the little reportage they provide does little to engender broad, public understanding of this massive social tragedy.

Conspicuous avoidance is due to several factors, one of the most important being the considerable ignorance possessed by typical mainstream journalists regarding the sectors of society inhabited by homeless people.   It is ignorance of which many journalists are proud.  Bourgeois, socially irresponsible pride, has proliferated in recent decades as an almost inevitable consequence of metropolitan, mainstream journalism becoming an integral component of the elite establishment. 

This has widespread negative consequences, at least for non-elite members of society, including the hundreds of thousands who are homeless.  The scale of the problem becomes immediately apparent when one considers the fact that the majority of the nation’s citizen’s are by no means elite.  

Because they follow the example of their metropolitan peers in matter of reportage in an almost rote manner, regional and local press organs are infected with shortcomings that are more or less the same as those of the metropolitan, elite media.   As a result, journalists who practice the craft outside elite sectors devote the bulk of their reportage to mainstream members of their communities, and matters pertinent to their perceived best interests. The corporate takeover of small, independently owned newspapers, regional chains, and broadcast stations across the nation during the past two decades has only made matters worse.

Thus, the day-to-day travails of homeless people, and the large cohort of poor, and near poor people at the bottom of the social order, are of secondary concern.   More often than not, their existence is only noted when they come into conflict with law enforcement officials, and agencies which provide them inadequate, sporadic assistance.   Few members of the mainstream media, or the hundreds of colleges and universities that train the journalists that work for them, are willing to publicly admit this.  But is it true nonetheless.

The systemic economic and political factors responsible for the growing number of homeless people receive particularly scant attention from mainstream journalists.  Moreover, much of the reportage devoted to this growing segment of our populace is hostile and dismissive.  One gets the impression that the nation’s mainstream journalists are uncomfortable with the subject of homelessness.   They are obviously more comfortable covering members of their own class, and this is particularly the case regarding those members who are wealthy, powerful and/or famous.

Homeless people are none of these things.  They are frequently penniless.  They don’t possess power. They do not engage in conspicuous consumption.  Nor are they considered to be “beautiful people.”  Instead, they tend to be dirty, unkempt, incoherent, and frequently incapable of engaging in dialogue of the sort common among elites.   

Maybe most important, homeless people constitute a dramatic repudiation of mainstream journalism’s mantra that ours is a healthy, balanced, fair and socially responsible society.  This is all the more reason why they should receive sustained, serious attention from mainstream journalists instead of the conspicuous avoidance commonly accorded them these days. 

An old man, and two ill-tempered dogs, have been living for the past few month on my block, in a ready-for-the-scrap-heap van. The man moves the van a few feet each day in order to avoid parking tickets. Sometimes he parks it on the south end of the block, and sometimes on the north. This past weekend, the van was parked directly in front of my building.

There are lots of dogs in this neighborhood, which has been thoroughly gentrified over the past decade. Most of the dogs brought in by the newly-arrived, upscale crowd, are pedigreed. As such, they tend to be handsome, well-groomed creatures, receiving better care than most of the ragged, homeless people who compete with them for sunny spaces in the local park.

But the dogs owned by the van dweller are mongrels. As such, they are scruffy, long-eared mutts; the kinds commonly found in the company of farmers, hunters, and others who need large animals to assist their recreation and labor. I suspect that the dogs which reside in the van on my street would be particularly helpful for prison guards engaged in a feverish search for escaped convicts.

The old man who resides in the van with the dogs is short, and probably close to retirement age.  He moves slowly. His hair is gray, patchy and unkempt. He wears faded clothing of the sort commonly sold in second-hand stores. He avoids eye contact with passersby, and I have never heard him utter a word to another human.

But I did hear him yell at the dogs a few days ago when they barked and snarled at me. I was walking along the sidewalk near my residence at the time, and the dogs were apparently warning me that I was closer to the van than they considered appropriate. Upon hearing his angry voice, the dogs fell silent. But the expressions on their faces, coupled with the keen stares they used to monitor my wary passage, informed me that I should be careful in the future when I pass their way.

I often wonder where the three of them obtain food and water, and how they dispose of their wastes. When it is cold and rainy, I wonder how they keep warm, whether the old man has family or friends, and if he longs for more normal living quarters.  I peered into one of the van’s windows as I walked past this afternoon.  It is filled with a wild jumble of clothes and clutter.  One of the dogs was sleeping peacefully in the driver’s seat.

There are obviously others like the supremely solitary old man here in San Francisco, where housing prices are among the highest in the United States.  Mostly, they are ignored by those fortunate enough to live indoors.

But this will probably change because the number of local people living in cluttered, old cars, truck and vans will increase during the months immediately ahead due to the current financial crisis. It is just a matter of time before disapproving neighborhood groups, supportive of chic settings and high property values,  begin to press local government officials to force vehicle dwellers off the streets, and out of town.

I have lived through more economic recessions than I care to recall, and I believe I have spent more than my fair share of days coping with the daily ravages of up close and personal poverty. Unpleasant memories of such events motivate my tendency to keep close watch on the money scene. Given what I am currently witnessing where that scene is concerned, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the phenomenon commonly referred to as “the global financial crisis,” is going to reshape the world we have come to regard as “normal” during the last few decades.

As is always the case when major, globalized, financial shifts occur, there will be winners and losers. Windfall profits will flow to those who reap the unprecedented income that will eventually flow to the winners. Unfortunately, the cumulative impact of the massive economic transformation currently threatening financial stability around the world is, in the short run at least, going to produce far more losers than winners.

Every section of the world is involved, and fear of a massive collapse financial collapse hovers in the air. Gorbachev provided one of the best descriptions of the confusion I perceive in the comments of many of the economic experts commenting on our current crisis in his book Perestroika. In the section recalled, Gorbachev described the disorienting confusion, and vast alarm, he and his colleagues in charge of the Soviet system experienced when they realized the levers of power they had normally used to manage their system were no longer functional.

I don’t mean here to suggest that the current global crisis is akin to the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, I am asserting that similar processes may be at work, including the inability of those in positions of authority at the highest levels to provide coherent explanations of what can and should be done to help the nation survive the crisis in the best possible shape. I fear that too little of the overall crisis is understood by too few of those responsible for making appropriate political and economic decisions pertinent to the nation’s best interests.

In any event, I will begin to believe that a necessary critical mass of the nation’s leaders understand the crisis, and the steps which need to be taken to mitigate its most negative social impacts, when they publicly acknowledge that we are witnessing the end of the era when every able-bodied American citizen can be expected to experience fulltime employment at live-able wages throughout his or her prime earning years. In other words, they need to acknowledge that the global economic system has evolved in a manner such that the labor of a large, and growing, number of U.S. citizens is no longer necessary for premium operation of the national economy.

The growing population of homeless people that has become a more or less permanent component of the social, political and and economic fabric of the U.S. over the past few decades is proof of this fact. Through good times and bad, the number of homeless people continues to grow. Moreover, there are many good reasons to conclude that they constitute a lead indicator of larger problems to come, absent the implementation of radically different social, economic and political policies. I anticipate that the number of people who share my perspective on this matter will increase as the current economic crisis exacts its increasingly destructive impact on members of previously comfortable segments of the middle and upper classes.

One of the most tragic indications of the desperate straits of tens of millions of poor people here in the United States is the ominously expanding group experiencing chronic hunger.  They exist in every section of the nation, and their suffering weighs heavy on everyone of good conscience.

Desperate for food, they congregate wherever they can obtain alms.  Such locations commonly include freeway entrances, restaurant doorways, subway steps, grocery store parking lots, food pantries, and the relatively small number of churches that provide them meager meals.

 All across the nation, large groups of hungry people gather each day at the doors of feeding stations in the poorest sections of towns, largely invisible to their better off neighbors.  Sometimes the long, patient food lines contain hundreds of people, including desperate senior citizens, and handicapped individuals of every sort.  The food lines have become so common in major cities that the mainstream news media rarely cover them.  Like the large number of homeless people who have come to be seen by the larger society as permanent components of our civic spaces, snaking lines of hungry people seeking free food are as common these days as parking tickets and street side trash. 

The hunger-driven beggars who congregate in the commercial districts of major cities are among the most obvious members of this severely disenfranchised segment of society. With their handmade, cardboard signs, and deferential postures, they are representative of the huge, generally unacknowledged, class of U.S. citizens who subsist without the most basic resources necessary to maintain consistently viable lives.

Now and again, a random citizen pauses to drop a few coins into the ever extended cups of the lucky beggars. But more often than not, the people from whom the ragged beggars seek assistance avert their eyes, and scurry along, exuding indifference of a sort that explains a lot about the isolating, callous nature of our dog-eat-dog status quo. Unlucky beggars, including those who appear too, dirty, unkempt, or vaguely threatening, receive few coins.  More often than not, they are left, therefore, to hope, on empty stomachs, for better days, which, may or may not, arrive.  

Recent data on the subject of chronic hunger in the U.S. indicate that approximately 35.5 million of our fellow citizens are burdened by this life-threatening problem.   That number includes almost 13 million children.   Almost 11 percent of households in this incomparably wealthy nation experience hunger as a common experience.   An additional 24.4 million U.S. citizens, including 12.2 million children, fall into the category of those who experience chronic food insecurity, according to Bread for the World.  This group includes an additional 6.9 percent of U.S. households.

The continued, and expanding, existence of this large, preventable, social tragedy should be deeply worrisome to also those who purport to care about this nation’s future good healthy, and viability.  For an individual, chronic hunger is a life draining process, and those who experience its ravages consistently, and for long periods, lose valuable physical, emotional and intellectual resources vital to survival.  Obviously, extreme hunger kills.

The negative consequences of widespread, debilitating hunger for society at large should also be obvious.  Consider the global dimension in order to acquire clarity regarding the nature of the threat posed by chronic hunger of the sort addressed here.  Even if the U.S. gets lucky, organized, focused, disciplined and appropriately dedicated to the task, it is going to take extraordinary achievement, maintained over a long period of time, to sustain the pace of economic development currently being set by India and China, with their billion-plus populations.  During the years immediately ahead, the U.S. can also expect to be challenged by a host of other regions and nations intent in expanding their share of profits and resources via smart, able participation in the global economy.

Unfortunately, the U.S. can’t hope to perform adequately in the increasingly important global arena with such a large percentage of its population incapacitated by chronic hunger, and the broad array of debilitating social problems it engenders.  Therefore, separate and apart from the ethical, moral, social and humanistic reasons why it should be done, the nation needs to eliminate chronic hunger because doing so is critical to the nation’s best interests.

Assuming the best, the in-coming Obama administration will address chronic hunger soon after it takes office.  Assuming the best, their plans will include a commitment to keeping every food bank, and free food distribution center in the nation, from ever running out of supplies.  The administration should also ensure that the food stamp program is adequately funded, and that needy senior citizens are graciously fed in ways that completely relieve them of fear of hunger.

The in-coming administration should also ensure that school lunch programs are provided the funding they need to ensure that every child who needs food gets it on a daily basis.  Given the large number of persons incarcerated in jails and prisons, the in-coming administration should also ensure that all prisoners are properly fed.

This is not, of course, an exhaustive list, and I am aware that I have not noted many kinds of citizens who desperately need food assistance.   Nonetheless, my hope is that these recommendations provide an indication of the direction in which the nation needs to move as quickly as possible, and the kinds of practical, grass roots procedures required to begin the process of eliminating widespread, chronic hunger in this nation. 

Although I have arguably been a professional writer for more than 40 years, and been published in various kinds of formats in several nations, I must acknowledge that I am more than a little perplexed by some of the problems associated with posting information on the Internet.  Prior to the arrival of this incredibly empowering medium, virtually all printed material distributed for mass consumption was subjected to a process of editing and review based on canons established and enforced over centuries.  However keen the writer, oversights occur.  In the best of circumstances, editors exist to catch such oversights and make them right before the material is approved for publication and distribution.

While vastly expanding the role and production capacity of all those who seek to distribute written words, and images of whatever sort, the Internet can effectively be used without the input, and accumulated wisdom, of editors, rewrite desks, fact checkers, and received common sense shared by disciplined, professional groups working closely together for decades. Thus, those of us who participate in this new, grand global marketplace of ideas and frivolous chatter, the recognition arrives sooner or later, that flying alone, and profoundly outside the traditional,  institutional framework associated with publishing and distributing mass messages, has a price.

I will say more on that.  But, in passing, I want to comment on the significance of the fact that the U.S. newspaper industry is collapsing.  This development presents the nation with a potential tragedy of massive proportions, because newspapers are the foundation on which responsible public dialogue is conducted in this nation, and much of the rest of the developed world.  Broadcast and cable news here in the United States is significantly derived from information gleaned from newspapers.  And pretty much all that information is subjected to the canons of review, criticism, and editing, mentioned above.

When, and if, newspapers go down, the people who possess the knowledge and wisdom required to produce them will disperse, and largely disappear.  This will inevitably exact an unavoidable transformation in national dialogue in ways that most of us will end up severely regretting.

In any event, back to the Internet.  As indicated, this new kind of publishing produces anxiety because of the responsibility required to get it all right. I worry a lot about tone.  I don’t want to insult anyone.  I don’t want to be considered hostile, or bitter, or mean-spirited. I don’t want to be hurtful to anyone, in any way.  I have been trained to think critically.  But my personal perspective is almost always optimistic.  Nonetheless, I worry about tone…

This line of thinking leads me to wonder about the limits to freedom, for myself, and everyone else in the world participating in this marvelous, new enterprise.  What are the rules?  How does one learn them?  What are the taboo subjects? What constitutes irresponsible commentary?  And what are the responsibilities of those who are knowledgeable and educated? How much criticism is too much?  What aspects of domestic and global affairs should watchful, sober-minded, and reasonable persons, avoid, if at all possible?

I am using this site to do whatever I reasonably can to assist in the elimination of poverty and homelessness.  I have studied the subject for decades, and this includes the use of long-term observations, located in major cities around the world. I believe I know what I am talking about when I get going about the nature of urban poverty in the world today.

Thus, I am attempting to  share some of what I have learned about poverty and homelessness, particularly in urban contexts.  In an effort to do this, I regularly touch on subjects rarely associated with poverty and homelessness.  That’s because I understand that endemic social problems of this sort have roots outside the specific locations in which they exist.  If I prove even moderately successful, more people will come to understand that poverty and homelessness can be eliminated, and that this can be accomplished in positive ways that benefit the whole of society.

But, as indicated above, I spend lots of time these days thinking about proper tone, and the rules of appropriate, and responsible, procedure…

This is a propitious moment to try to influence the national dialogue regarding endemic poverty and homelessness here in the United States.   Three factors in particular lead me to this conclusion: the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street engineered by the U.S. Congress, the global financial crisis, and the mandate for change recently extended to Barack Obama by voters in virtually every section of the nation.

The bailout, which some refer to as “George Bush Socialism,” requires that we rethink current assumptions about the role of government vis-à-vis major societal problems. Before the bailout was approved by Congress–and virtually every other significant segment of the ruling class– conservatives consistently managed to impede virtually all substantive efforts to alter national policies regarding the use of government to eliminate social problems.

Thus, in addition to asserting that there was no money for major, new social programs focused on poverty and homelessness, they routinely argued that any such programs would violate the capitalistic principles on which the nation’s financial system allegedly rests.

Fortunately, the massive Wall Street bailout exposed the bias inherent in that particular form of resistance to change.  Immediately after it became apparent that “the Street’ was in trouble, largely due to its own addiction to self-serving financial chicanery, the full might of the federal government was quickly mobilized to provide assistance.

The swift manner in which the $700 billion bailout was approved and allocated validated the point so-called “bleeding heart liberals” have been making at least since the Great Depression–government can, and should, be used to solve major social problems.

As a result, it is now apparent that huge sums of money, and the full array of government resources, could be efficiently deployed to address poverty and homelessness—if the will to do so is sufficient.  Unfortunately, there is no critical mass of public support at this moment in support of such action.

This is largely due to the deeply entrenched biases that exist in the United States which consistently favor the wealthy.  The Bush tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit those at the top of the nation’s increasingly steep economic pyramid, constitute a particularly egregious example of the biased nature of national policy regarding the distribution of resources and opportunities.

One of the most unfortunate results of such bias is continuing neglect of the huge segment of the populace composed of poor people, including those who are so poor that they are forced to live–and all too frequently die–on the streets.  Any reasonably honest person has to acknowledge that this absolutely deplorable situation is immoral.  It is also illegal, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which holds that every person has a right to housing.

Spokespersons for poor nations with limited resources frequently assert that they can’t afford to provide adequate housing to all their citizens.  There’s some validity to such claims.  But even in the case of poor nations, much more can and should be done to house those who are too poor to afford to do so themselves.

Wealthy nations such as the United States can’t reasonably claim that they can’t afford to house the homeless—because this is obviously not true.  The truth of the matter is that the United States can easily afford to house every person in the nation who is too poor to do so for him or her self.  In order to build support for government reforms of the sort needed to eliminate poverty and homelessness, pressure needs to be applied in the citadels of power.

This effort should include coordinated efforts to get the incoming Obama administration to place poverty and homelessness higher on its list of domestic priorities than seems to be the case at this moment.  My best judgment is that those who pursue this course of action should coordinate their efforts.  They should also consolidate their dialogue in support of three key reasons why national policy regarding endemic poverty and homeless people need to be radically reformed.

The first is that arbitrary, preventable suffering of the sort typically experienced by poor people and the homeless is immoral.  As such, it degrades the character and quality of life for everyone in the society, the wealthy included.

The second major reason why endemic poverty and homelessness should be eliminated is that they are, as indicated above, illegal.  U.S. proponents of human rights have not pursued prosecutions in domestic or international courts up to this point. Nonetheless, my best sense is that it is just a matter of time until human rights laws begin to be taken more seriously in this nation.  Thus, it is possible to foresee a time in the not too distant future when charges of criminal neglect will be lodged against major political figures in the U.S. for their callous treatment of those who are poor and/or homeless.

This point should be made as clearly, and diplomatically, as possible to members of the incoming Obama administration.   Given the fact that the President-elect has already asserted his belief that healthcare is a human right, getting him to add economic security and housing to his list of rights that will be supported by his change-oriented administration seems to me to be an achievable objective.

The current global financial crisis is the third factor, which should be cited by those seeking to get the incoming administration to commit to the elimination of endemic poverty and homelessness.  The key point to be made is that this ominously expanding crisis should be seen as an early warning of big, unavoidable problems ahead.  Hundreds of millions of workers from developing nations such as China, India, Brazil, and scores of other rapidly developing nations, are beginning to participate in the integrated global financial system.

Those workers, who can and do prosper even though their wages tend to be only a fraction of those paid to their U.S. counterparts who are similarly employed, are destined to displace a huge swath of the U.S. labor force.  When this occurs, the current mortgage crisis roiling the U.S. economy will appear small by comparison.

Most important, it is almost certain that the number of U.S. citizens forced into poverty, out of their homes and into the streets, will grow exponentially as the transforming impact of these new workers becomes more widespread.  The sooner the Obama administration begins to prepare for this eventuality, the better.  And the best preparation they can engage in will include an updated, radically expanded domestic social safety net.

Whenever and wherever possible, proponents of an updated, radically expanded social safety net should emphasize the point that new programs, priorities and initiatives designed to eliminate endemic poverty and homeless are critically important to this nation’s long term viability.  They should also note that the longer it takes before the U.S. establishes a 21^st century social safety net, the bigger the task will be when it is eventually addressed.

My fervent hope is that the hordes of bright men and women hovering around Barack Obama as he prepares his governing agenda possess more understanding of these matters than is apparent to me at this moment.  I also hope they are discussing with the President-elect the nation’s urgent need to begin work on the necessary social reforms as soon after he take office as possible–because city streets across the nation are being flooded with jobless, penniless, homeless people.

Unfortunately, many of those destined to be members of the nation’s ominously expanding population of destitute, homeless people are currently convinced, as is “Joe the Plumber,” that government should not be used to address their problems—because they are not millionaires, nor billionaires of the sort who hang out on Wall Street.

How utterly tragic…  

Everyone paying close attention to the campaigns for the presidency being waged by Barack Obama and John McCain is aware that they are studiously avoiding all references to endemic poverty and homelessness.  On a daily basis, the two of them, and their legions of on-message surrogates, assail us with words intended to convey the intensity of their commitment to improving the lives of middle-class Americans.

 Nonetheless, neither candidate ever wanders off-message and talks candidly about what he intends to do if elected to assist the hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans, who obviously need more assistance than members of the middle-class.  I assume they are consciously avoiding the subject because anyone who spends as much time on the streets of this nation’s cities, large and small, as the two of them is aware that an ominously large number of U.S. citizens are homeless and destitute.  Given the current rate of home foreclosures, this does not bode well for the future.

I am not surprised by John McCain’s failure to address the nation’s disturbingly large and growing homeless crisis.  Most Republicans strive to present an idealized version of life here in the U.S., which requires constant, Soviet-style editing of the brutish, unpleasant aspects of life among the millions of so-called “losers” at the bottom of the social order.   Moreover, the prosperous crowd that constitutes McCain’s primary reference group is addicted to modes of greed and denial which more or less ensure that subjects such as poverty and homelessness do not intrude on their delusional chit chat about alleged terrorists and anti-intellectual, white, working-class heroes.  Among members of this hard-hearted crew, homeless people are generally considered to be genetically inferior “proles” responsible for their own wretched plight

The disdain McCain invariably exudes whenever he mentions Obama’s proposed tax cuts for people who earn less than $250,000 per year is indicative of his overall hostility toward those at the very bottom of the domestic social order.  He obviously believes that liberal efforts to “spread the wealth” are misbegotten forms of creeping Socialism—if the wealth spreading is intended to help poor people.  Nonetheless, he is obviously committed to helping the wealthy when and wherever he can. 

What I find endlessly fascinating is the clever, and frequently unprincipled, tactics he and other Republicans commonly use in order to get working-class people, whites in particular, to vote against their best economic interests.  But that’s the subject of a forthcoming post. Right now I want to focus on the subject of homelessness, and the manner in which it is being disappeared by both candidates.

Barack Obama is, of course, taking a different philosophical approach than John McCain in his effort to acquire victory in his campaign to become President.   He is indeed the most Liberal person to get this close to being elected President in living memory.  Moreover, he is clearly committed to egalitarian principles and priorities that will provide support for more average U.S. citizens than have been served in any good manner during the currently vilified Bush era.

But like McCain, Obama repeatedly indicates that he intends to do his very best if elected to assist members of the middle-class.  I am not opposed to this.  Members of the middle-class obviously need assistance on several fronts.  These include help with mortgages, health care and education, not to mention the many ways in which better, more enlightened energy and social policies will elevate their overall quality of life. 

Nonetheless, Obama’s avoidance of any substantive discussion of homelessness, and other manifestations of soul and body destroying endemic poverty, is probably indicative of the fact that the Liberal philosophy he professes is in some ways just as inadequate as the dated, morally corrupt, protect-the-wealthy, Conservative nostrums being spewed on a daily basis by McCain, and the expensively attired, cunning, but largely clueless, Sarah Palin.

As far as John McCain is concerned, win or lose on November 4, his current trajectory ensures that he will end his political career on the wrong side of history, fighting for tradition, empire and privilege at a time when the so-called “Winds of Change” are blowing in a fundamentally different direction.  In other words, he is as delusional and misguided during this, the winter of his long career of shallow strutting and fretting on the stage of public affairs as he was at its beginning, the period during which he was cruising through Vietnamese airspace in search of people on the ground who could more of less be easily murdered.  Where the moral case for improving the character and quality of life in the U.S. is concerned, John McCain is essentially a lost cause, and probably always has been.

Given his youth, intellect, and current prospects for success on November 4, it seems reasonable to hold out more hope for Barack Obama.  Nonetheless, he is clearly a work in progress.  And there are many good reasons to be deeply concerned about the manner in which he will exercise influence and authority if he is elected.

For example, he seems intent on maintaining the U.S. military empire, which is a major, unacknowledged source of the nation’s current economic meltdown, not to mention widespread criminal activities such as torture and worse that may well result in some current U.S. leaders at the highest levels of government being prosecuted in international tribunals for engaging in crimes against humanity.   

Moreover, Obama’s bellicose comments regarding the manner in which he intends to expand U.S. military operations in Pakistan/Afghanistan if he is elected do not engender a great deal of confidence in his strategic vision.  If he is not extremely careful, President Obama could very well end up permitting the war currently being waged in Pakistan/Afghanistan to become for his administration a cancer of the sort metastasizing via the criminal assault the Bush administration is currently waging in Iraq.

Barack Obama needs to think long and hard about the reasons why he, along with John McCain, supported the $700 billion Wall Street bailout hastily cobbled together by Congress and the Bush administration.  If he does so, he may come to understand that the mainstream liberalism he espouses contains many reactionary elements of despicable Social Darwinism that preclude the possibility of his adequately addressing the needs of this society’s most unfortunate citizens, a criminally large percentage of whom are homeless.

In other words, the actual change we desperately need requires the development and implementation of a new, Social Contract representative of the unprecedented domestic and geopolitical realities shaping the economic, political and cultural parameters of this new century.  Thus, Barack Obama’s long term success or failure, should he be elected on November 4, will be largely determined on the basis of whether he changes his current conventional course and adopts a newer, more humane and politically audacious, agenda.  At the very least, he will need a domestic agenda that fundamentally alters the manner in which homelessness is currently mishandled, lied about and denied in this critically unbalanced, and criminally neglectful, society.