With Liberty and Justice for All?

I have heard stories of the poor being penalized in the United States. Stories such as the one here ,outrage the social justice freak in me. However, I read a story today that has taken the cake. While our government hands failing banks trillions of tax payer dollars, while this economy is creating homeless families in numbers not seen since the Great Depression, while jobs are being lost at an explosive rate, and the Fed can’t account for 9.7 trillion dollars of OUR money–while the government is evicting Americans from tent cities forcing them to shelters, New York has decided that charging the homeless rent is a good thing.  That’s right. Taking advantage of homeless people and families who are working and trying to save to get out of shelters are now being charged up to half of their income as rent. This only applies to the poor who are actually trying to make a better situation for themselves by finding and keeping jobs. The people who do not work, of course are not being forced to pay anything. (story link here)
The policy of rent for shelter was enacted in 1997, but never enforced until this month. I guess in a failing economy, when a city does not have the privilege of printing money out of thin air like Washington does, the appropriate course of action to get more money is to squeeze it out of every citizen who can cough it up. Usually this money grabbing scheme is carried out in tax hikes, or police ticketing for speeding at 3 whole miles over the speed limit. Somehow though, the sudden enforcement of this law is particularly disgusting and smacks of tyranny.

Lets get something straight. There are those who are a “soak” on tax payer dollars. Drug addicts who are homeless, those who will not support their children, drunks who can’t hold a buck in their pocket longer than it takes to buy a bottle from the corner liquor store are people who line up for shelter and food every night of the blessed year, and they are not ever turned away or forced to spend a single cent for it. Charging those who are working to get a leg up in an economy that keeps knocking them down, is only forcing them to stay in homeless shelters longer. Then again, this is what the Mafia would consider a “deal”. Protection for dollars. It’s a deal that never ends. It’s the same logic – pay, and you stay. Except the paying families will no longer be able to save for an apartment to get out. The more money they make, the more money government takes. Maybe they should all quit and collect welfare for life, because it seems as if that’s what the government would prefer.

WTF
has our country come to when we shovel billion upon billions upon more billions of dollars on big banks
then force the working homeless to shell out half of their wages to sleep in a cot in a room shared with 20 other people??

What An Obama Presidency Really Means

I’ve seen a lot of talk around Xanga, and elsewhere, about what an Obama presidency means for the nation.  Some seem to believe he is nothing short of the next messiah, holding the promise and ability to fix all of our society’s ills overnight.  Others seem to believe he is the devil incarnate, holding the power to magnify our problems ten-fold and destroy our nation and our freedom overnight.

I have a little bit of a newsflash for all of you.  You’re wrong.  He’s neither.  The President holds neither the power to save us, nor destroy us.

To those who believe his election is a symbol of how far this nation has come in recognizing racial equality, I ask you why the color of his skin has been the focus of the last few weeks.  Why is it any less wrong to recognize him for the color of his skin, than it would be to discriminate against him because of it?  The fact that you can’t see past his skin color to anything else that might be important about the position he has been elected to, serves only to prove how much further this nation has to go before racial equality is truly achieved.

To those who believe he is the antichrist, I ask you why you are afraid of this?  Presumably, if you believe this, it is because you are a Christian and you trust the Bible as the word of God.  Doesn’t that same Word also tell us that Christ will return for His people, after the antichrist comes?  Don’t we trust Him to take care of us, to secure our eternal home for us no matter what happens here?

To those who believe he will single-handedly destroy our nation by suspending our constitution, instituting wide-spread socialism in healthcare and the financial sector, reverse all existing laws & court rulings limiting abortion or requiring parental consent for such, instantaneously banning of firearms ownership of any kind, or any of the other fearful ideas being whispered, I ask you what kind of power you think the office of President really holds.  Of the various branches of government, the President holds relatively little power.  All of the above-mentioned issues, and any others that you may hold dear, are completely out of his realm of control until such things land on his desk in the form of a bill that has already been approved by the House and Senate and awaits only his signature to become finalized into law.  Even then, the Supreme Court still holds power of review for potentially unconstitutional decisions.

To those who believe he will wave his magic pen and solve the economic crisis, end the war in Iraq, fix our ailing health and education systems, and other various complex issues, I ask the same question as those who fear his power.  What do you think the President can really do about these issues?  He doesn’t have the power to do any of the things you seem to think he will, unless Congress presents it to him as a bill to be signed into law.  Furthermore, these are complex issues that are unlikely to have a single, simple, quick “fix” no matter how badly you or anyone else wants it to happen.

President Obama is neither the savior, nor the destroyer, of our nation.  He’s another President, sworn in like those before him and those that will come after him.  We are living in troubled times, and like him or not, he is our new leader.  Neither false fears, nor false hopes are going to do any of us any good as we try to come to terms with the problems currently facing our nation and find ways to solve them.

What do you think the Obama Presidency really means, for us and for the world?