Tent cities in America - here's one of them, complete with photos

While Americans argue amongst themselves over wages, union bargaining rights, government spending, monetary easing, and a host of other issues, including who’s to blame for the country’s malaise, Minister Brigham and his community trudge on, despite what’s happening outside of their neighborhood microcosm. As millions struggle to hold on to the American Dream, the residents of this New Jersey “Tent City” have already experienced loss, and the emotional roller coaster that inevitably follows. They’ve gone through the first four stages of loss – denial, anger, bargaining, depression. In a situation where everything has been lost, and hope seemingly doesn’t exist, only the fifth stage, acceptance, becomes applicable. These individuals and families have accepted what has happened, and understand that they have a choice. Either give up and wallow in regret and blame. Or, empower oneself, and those around you, and move forward by whatever means are available.

A Visit to an American Tent City
Mac Slavo, March 11, 2011

Jobs may be out there but they don't pay

But to get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created. That’s where the big problem lies.

The National Employment Law Project did just that. Its new data brief shows that most of the new jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010.

While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour.

In other words, the big news isn’t jobs. It’s wages.

For several years now, conservative economists have blamed high unemployment on the purported fact that many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech jobs market.

So if we want more jobs, they say, we’ll need to take pay and benefit cuts.

And that’s exactly what Americans have been doing.

Employers have demanded wage and benefit concessions from their unionized workers and often got them. Detroit is creating auto jobs again — but new hires are getting about half the pay that auto workers were getting before. Airline workers are taking home 30 to 50 percent less than they did years ago. And so on.

The Real News on Jobs
Robert Reich, Truthout, March 4, 2011

This matches perfectly with this author's everyday impressions. There seems to be an awful lot of service jobs around which pay wages at around $10 per hour. Quite laughable especially in large metropolitan areas. And by "laughable" I certainly don't mean "funny".

For now what we seems to be doing is just watching the people lose their faith in honest work, lose their hope, their work ethics... What's next? A crime wave? Riots in the streets? Police oppression? All of the above?

Quotes of Dissent

The text below was emailed to me. BE

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

~Harry S. Truman

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. ~Edward R. Murrow

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. ~William O. Douglas

We see political leaders replacing moral imperatives with a Southern strategy. We have seen all too clearly that there are men≈now in power in this country≈who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit. And it is up to us to prove that they are wrong.

JOHN V. LINDSAY, mayor of New York City, speech at University of California, Berkeley, April 2, 1970

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

Jacob Bronowski

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity≈much less dissent.

Gore Vidal

"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

:	Dwight D. Eisenhower

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." -James Baldwin,

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.

-Pete Seeger, [from testimony for the House of Un-American Activities Committee], August 15, 1955

John F. Kennedy:

Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive

Edward R. Murrow:

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices. (about Senator Joseph McCarthy's accusations about Communism in the American government)

Barbara Ehrenreich:

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

Archibald Macleish:

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

No innocents?

The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."

All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said. (Efrat Weiss)

Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocents
YnetNews.com, July 30, 2006

Well, the Rabbinical Council has clearly and unequivocally given its moral approval of every terrorist attack, past and future. Hamas, Al Qaeda, IRA, The Shining Path Marxist rebels of Peru or any other group that perceives itself to be at war can, according to the learned Rabbis of the council, maim or kill anybody whom it considers to be part of the enemy population as not one member of that population, be that a newborn baby or a frail old lady, is an 'innocent', according to those Rabbis.

Most Israelis would likely disagree with the opinion of the Council. For one thing, most Israelis do not approve of Hamas blowing up their civilian buses killing innocents riding on them. As for me personally - I am a Jew, but whatever it is those Rabbis understand to be Jewish law is nothing I would want to abide by.

Targeting Civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In his article Anthony Gregory makes a number of important points. I certainly agree with him that if suicide bombings of buses or the events of 9/11 are to be considered acts of political terrorism, so must the intentional mass killings of civilians in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Drezden, Leningrad, Rotterdam and many other places whose civilian populations were likewise intentionally eviscerated by various warring parties during the World War II.

It certainly reflects favorably on the US as a society that eventually Americans showed themselves capable of taking a critical view on those events of which they were part such as nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is also true that in today's wars the US attempts to minimize civilian casualties. However, it is worth noting that that is mostly possible due to advances in technologies which have taken military precision to a whole new level.

But I think we need to acknowledge that terrorism is not something that just came out of the blue and plunged us into the "age of terror" on 9/11/2001. Terrorism is a military tactic, it has been used in many wars,- including by us in some of the wars we have fought.