Bluegrass Music

Sunday morning Bluegrass goes perfect with coffee. Songs from one of my favorite cds.

Happy, sad, spiritual, hopeful ... all at once ... that's Bluegrass.

Homelessness

I read an interesting article on homelessness from ThinkProgress. It touches on the notion that preventing homelessness from happening before it happens is a real solution to cutting down on homelessness. (Makes perfect sense). And the sentiment that mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, and poverty must be remedied before homeless people can be assigned permanent housing is being replaced with the common sense concept that housing has to come first, then the other issues can be dealt with and resolved more effectively. “one thing that everyone who’s homeless needs is a home.”

The whole article is worth a read. It’s packed with good information and is enlightening and hopeful. It also points to some reputable organizations doing a lot of good work for homeless people … places that could use some donations and volunteers to meet their goal of ending homelessness.

Here is an excerpt:

The 1980s “was when contemporary homelessness really began,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. “It’s really critical to remember that we didn’t always have mass homelessness in this country.”

After the widespread homelessness caused by the Great Depression, it became a limited and short-term problem for decades. Homelessness will always exist among people experiencing unexpected poverty, struggling with mental illness or substance abuse, or coping with other unexpected events. But it used to be that getting back on your feet didn’t take months or years. And homelessness used to mostly impact a narrow slice of society: white, urban, older men, many dealing with alcoholism.

“In the 70s, there was an adequate supply of affordable housing, even a surplus,” said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “If people lost their housing, you could get them back into some place right away.”

In 1970, there was a surplus of 300,000 affordable housing units in the U.S. But then, in the 1980s, affordable housing began to evaporate. The Reagan administration slashed funding. Federal spending on housing assistance fell by 50 percent between 1976 and 2002. At the same time, gentrification sped up, with cities getting rid of cheap housing like single room occupancy units and replacing them with more expensive stock, and units being built were more often for co-ops and condos for ownership instead of rent. Federal incentives to build affordable housing dried up. Add to that the AIDs crisis, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, cutbacks to the social safety net, and the rise in incarceration and subsequent hurdles for reentry, and you have today’s crisis.

By 1985, there were 8.9 million poor renters in need of housing but just 5.6 million units, a 3.2 million shortage. By 2009, there was a 5.5 million shortage. Today, just one in four eligible households gets federal rental assistance while rents keep rising, income stagnates, and a record number of families are paying more than what they can afford.

Other changes since the 1980s have been for the better. When mass homelessness emerged, we weren’t ready for it. “There was a process of learning, because we did a lot of things in the beginning that I think were intuitive, but we’ve learned a lot,” Roman said.

The original focus was on creating a plan to help someone with mental illness or substance abuse before getting her in housing, as well as a reliance on the shelter system, explained Jerry Jones, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “If you go back a few years, it was an emphasis on creating a consensus plan on the local level,” he said. “If you went back 10 or probably 15 years, there was more of an emphasis on transitional housing.”

By now, if there’s one thing that nearly everyone working to end homelessness agrees, it’s that we know how to do it. It’s just a matter of making it reality. The focus is singular, as Rachel Myers, executive director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance explains. “People are homeless for different reasons and have different kinds of needs,” she said. “But one thing that everyone who’s homeless needs is a home.”

The above article credited to Bryce Covert, Economic Policy Editor at ThinkProgress. Here’s her email: bcovert@thinkprogress.org

Green Day-Last Of The American Girls(Live at Jimmy Fallon)

President Trump

This is some serious shit now. Trump won the 2016 Presidential election.

Unbelievable. Everyone I've spoken to seems to be in shock. No one seems able to believe it.

I blame Hillary. If she hadn't fucked Bernie out of winning the nomination (which I believe she did), Bernie would have beat Trump and it would have been President Sanders.

Well, we have to just put on our seat belts and ride out the storm. I'm hoping he surprises us and actually does some good. Time will tell. We're powerless to do much about it anyway.

We're a Plutocracy Democratic Republic (maybe) full of voiceless, powerless people.

Pretty fucked up.

Go Vote Today (for Stein)

Just go vote for the person you think will make you happy or healthy or wealthy or less marginalized.

I was a Bernie supporter. I was positive he would have changed things for the better. He was the only scandal-free candidate and it seemed like the bigger his crowds got and the more state primaries he won, the more electoral votes Hillary got. WTF? It seems the system really is rigged (Jesus Christ, is Trump right?)

I’m not voting for Hillary because she thinks $15 bucks an hour is too high of a minimum wage for working class stiffs of America, but thinks its normal for her to earn around $1000 dollars a minute talking to wealthy corporate thieves. (Yes … that says per minute, motherfucker)

I’m not voting for Trump because he’s too rich to really give a fuck about poor people or homeless people or working people or struggling people. He sends jobs overseas because that’s what wealthy companies do – that’s how they make money. And Mike Pence spends every waking minute trying to control women’s reproduction as if that’s the only issue in America. Any man who devotes that much time to worrying about uterine activity has perv stamped all over him.

  

I’m not voting for Gary Johnson because the “Take Care of Yourself” mentality of the Libertarian party doesn’t sit well with my “Let’s Help Other Humans” mentality. Interestingly, Johnson wants less government interference in the lives of citizens, but is okay with big brother interfering and controlling women’s reproductive freedoms.

BTW, Gary, here’s a picture of Aleppo for you you fucking idiot : 

 

New York Times photo

 

I'm voting for Jill Stein. She’s the only one that holds my values, is concerned about people other than herself, and has faith in humans to strive and flourish if given a fair chance in life. I trust her, I like her, and I’m voting for her. For all the Hillary people saying, “A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump”, I say, “Go fuck yourselves. A vote for Jill is actually a vote for Jill.”

See you at the polls. Go vote - for whoever you think will help you.