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We the people have spoken.

The landscape of politics has been changed at least for now, but we are facing the worse economic crisis since the 1920-30’s.Now more than ever this nation must move toward energy independence as soon as possible. We can no longer afford to put our future in the hands of nations that would like to see us disappear from the world stage.

If nothing is done very soon this nation will fall by the wayside of past empires now spoken of in museums and history books.

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Experts agree with me that oil will rise to unprecedented levels. There are some who say that oil will rise to more than $400 per Barrel by 2010. Now is the time for us to come up with some innovation of our own. Let's hope our new President will move quickly like a comet toward energy independence or this nation will soon be only a memory.

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George W. Bush is flooding our nation with hundreds of executive orders that are aimed at helping big corporations, but at the same time he is making it impossible for the poorest of our people to seek medical help.

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If only you could understand that to qualify for Medicaid you must be far below the poverty line. Those who qualify haven’t got money to spend on doctor’s visits or prescriptions. They are the poorest of the poor. What this amounts to is punishing those least able to afford it. At a time when the people of this nation face hardships the likes of which we’ve never seen Bush is removing the only safety net many have.

He has spent trillions on war and to bail out Wall Street but he is bent on allowing the innocent to die in the streets.

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I’ve been told there are too many on the take, but how about the elderly, the sick, the infirmed, or hardworking families who for no fault of their own have lost their jobs and fallen on hard times? I agree the lazy must learn to work, but we can’t paint everyone with the same brush.

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{Another, issued last week by the Health and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to charge higher co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid.}

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This from an oil millionaire who has never faced a day of want in his entire life. This same man will collect a huge pension paid by we the people of this nation and will receive free medical for life while the poor will face a choice between feeding their families or dying from want of medical help.

I have a problem with this since if a person is on Social Security they can’t get benefits if their income is above a certain amount. Why should our former government officials be treated any different than the general public?

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27972415/page/2/

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28389056

In hard times, tent cities rise across the country.

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Since foreclosure mess, homeless advocates report rise in encampments.

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Scott Sady / AP

Robert Scott Cook, originally from Alaska, sits with one of his dogs, Zoey, at the tent city that sprung up next to the homeless shelter in Reno, Nev.

Homeless encampments are springing up around the country, including this one next to the homeless shelter in downtown Reno, Nev.

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RENO, Nev. - A few tents cropped up by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.

Then others appeared – people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.

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Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" – an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.

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From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.

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Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening.

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"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."

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Caught by surprise

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The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.

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"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore. and Seattle.

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The relatively Tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans.

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The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.

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In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters.

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Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include Chattanooga, Tenn., San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless – such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week.

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In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after HUD's most recent data was compiled.

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"The data predates the housing crisis," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD. "From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That's a great question. We're still trying to get to that."

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In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up – in remote places to avoid police sweeps.

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"What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else – on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people.

Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps – acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s."

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In Reno, officials decided to let the tent city be because shelters were already filled.

Officials don't know how many homeless people are in Reno. "But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director.

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Those in the tents have to register and are monitored weekly to see what progress they are making in finding jobs or real housing. They are provided times to take showers in the shelter, and told where to go for food and meals.

Hopes for casino jobs dashed

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Sylvia Flynn, 51, came from northern California but lost a job almost immediately and then her apartment.

Since the cheapest motels here charge upward of $200 a week, Flynn ended up at the Reno women's shelter, which has only 20 beds and a two-week limit on stays.

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Out of a dozen people interviewed in the tent city, six had come to Reno from California or elsewhere over the last year, hoping for casino jobs.

"I figured this would be a great place for a job," said Max Perez, a 19-year-old from Iowa. He couldn't find one and ended up taking showers at the men's shelter and sleeping in a pup tent barely big enough to cover his body.

The casinos are actually starting to lay off employees.

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"Sometimes I think we need to put out an ad: 'No, we don't have any more jobs than you do,'" Royal-Goodwin said.

The city will shut down the tent city as soon as early October because the tents sit on what will be a parking lot for a complex of shelters and services for homeless people. The complex will include a men's shelter, a women's shelter, a family shelter and a resource center.

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Reno officials aren't sure whether the construction will eliminate the need for the tent city. The demand, they say, keeps growing.

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Don’t you find it strange that in this so called wealthy nation there are so many homeless?We have trillions of dollars to hand out all over the globe to countries that hate our guts and yet we can’t afford to care for our own people. In hard times Charity must begin at home.

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Read the following and you be the judge.

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Any person of average intelligence will tell you that you can’t buy friends, so what are we doing?

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This actually checks out on snopes.com. As a matter of fact, they

did their own study & found the % s to be considerably WORSE . .. .

How they vote in the United Nations:

Below are the actual voting records of various Arabic/Islamic States

which are recorded in both the US State Department and United Nations

records:

Kuwait votes against the United States 67% of the time

Qatar votes against the United States 67% of the time

Morocco votes against the United States 70% of the time

United Arab Emirates votes against the U. S. 70% of the time.

Jordan votes against the United States 71% of the time.

Tunisia votes against the United States 71% of the time.

Saudi Arabia votes against the United States 73% of the time.

Yemen votes against the United States 74% of the time.

Algeria votes against the United States 74% of the time.

Oman votes against the United States 74% of the time.

Sudan votes against the United States 75% of the time.

Pakistan votes against the United States 75% of the time.

Libya votes against the United States 76% of the time.

Egypt votes against the United States 79% of the time.

Lebanon votes against the United States 80% of the time.

India votes against the United States 81% of the time.

Syria votes against the United States 84% of the time.

Mauritania votes against the United States 87% of the time.

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U.S. Foreign Aid to those that hate us:

Egypt, for example, after voting 79% of the time against the United

States, still receives $2 billion annually in US Foreign Aid.

Jordan votes 71% against the United States.

And receives $192,814,000 annually in US Foreign Aid.

Pakistan votes 75% against the United States

Receives $6,721,000 annually in US Foreign Aid.

India votes 81% against the United States

Receives $143,699,000 annually.

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Someone please answer me why we are giving

Egypt 2 Billion dollars per year, for what?

And that's not even mentioning the 100's of

millions of dollars for the rest of these countries

that hate us. What is this money for? This is a

very bad time for us to be giving billions to

nations that hate us. We who pay the taxes

have a right to say this is absurd. We as a

nation are struggling to put gas in our cars

and food on our tables because these jerks

continue to raise the price of oil while burning

our flag and protesting us on every issue.

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This nation can not afford to bribe the world,

nor can we act as the world’s policeman.

We neither have the manpower or the infinite

capital to do so.

Don’t you think it’s about time we as a

nation apply some common sense to

our national politics?

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