American Refugee Camps

2008 will see a dramatic increase in makeshift refugee camps across America. As jobs dry up and people are driven onto the streets these tent camps become the last resort for a growing number of destitute families.

Tent city in suburbs is cost of U.S. home crisis

* Reuters
* Friday December 21 2007

By Dana Ford
ONTARIO, Calif., Dec 21 (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits “tent city,” a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck’s novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it’s just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.

“They don’t hit the streets immediately,” said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. “They only hit tent city when they really bottom out.”

Steve, 50, who declined to give his last name, moved to tent city four months ago. He gets social security payments, but cannot work and said rents are too high.
“House prices are going down, but the rentals are sky-high,” said Steve. “If it wasn’t for here, I wouldn’t have a place to go.”

‘SQUATTING IN VACANT HOUSES’

Nationally, foreclosures are at an all-time high. Filings are up nearly 100 percent from a year ago, according to the data firm RealtyTrac. Officials say that as many as half a million people could lose their homes as adjustable mortgage rates rise over the next two years.

California ranks second in the nation for foreclosure filings — one per 88 households last quarter. Within California, San Bernardino county in the Inland Empire is worse — one filing for every 43 households, according to RealtyTrac.

Maryanne Hernandez bought her dream house in San Bernardino in 2003 and now risks losing it after falling four months behind on mortgage payments.

“It’s not just us. It’s all over,” said Hernandez, who lives in a neighborhood where most families are struggling to meet payments and many have lost their homes.

She has noticed an increase in crime since the foreclosures started. Her house was robbed, her kids’ bikes were stolen and she worries about what type of message empty houses send.

The pattern is cropping up in communities across the country, like Cleveland, Ohio, where Mark Wiseman, director of the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program, said there are entire blocks of homes in Cleveland where 60 or 70 percent of houses are boarded up.

“I don’t think there are enough police to go after criminals holed up in those houses, squatting or doing drug deals or whatever,” Wiseman said.

“And it’s not just a problem of a neighborhood filled with people squatting in the vacant houses, it’s the people left behind, who have to worry about people taking siding off your home or breaking into your house while you’re sleeping.”

Health risks are also on the rise. All those empty swimming pools in California’s Inland Empire have become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which can transmit the sometimes deadly West Nile virus, Riverside County officials say.

‘TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT’

But it is not just homeowners who are hit by the foreclosure wave. People who rent now find themselves in a tighter, more expensive market as demand rises from families who lost homes, said Jean Beil, senior vice president for programs and services at Catholic Charities USA.
“Folks who would have been in a house before are now in an apartment and folks that would have been in an apartment, now can’t afford it,” said Beil. “It has a trickle-down effect.”

For cities, foreclosures can trigger a range of short-term costs, like added policing, inspection and code enforcement. These expenses can be significant, said Lt. Scott Patterson with the San Bernardino Police Department, but the larger concern is that vacant properties lower home values and in the long-run, decrease tax revenues.

And it all comes at a time when municipalities are ill-equipped to respond. High foreclosure rates and declining home values are sapping property tax revenues, a key source of local funding to tackle such problems.

Earlier this month, U.S. President George W. Bush rolled out a plan to slow foreclosures by freezing the interest rates on some loans. But for many in these parts, the intervention is too little and too late.

Ken Sawa, CEO of Catholic Charities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said his organization is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle the volume of people seeking help.
“We feel helpless,” said Sawa. “Obviously, it’s a local problem because it’s in our backyard, but the solution is not local.”

Model for a Slave State Program

This is a model for a slave state program. At what point do they branch out and let Insurance and Credit Card companies in on the action. Eventually anyone with unpaid debt will be forced into this type of indentured servitude.

NY Town Lets Seniors Work to Pay Taxes

By JIM FITZGERALD – 1 day ago

GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check each month and worries about the sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76, raised her family there and after 43 years, she really doesn't want to leave Greenburgh.

Greenburgh doesn't want her to leave, either.

The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.

"People shouldn't have to sell their house, move away to a place with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends," said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.

He envisions retired doctors mentoring schoolchildren, retired accountants helping with the town's finances, retired lawyers offering their services for a discount. But there are plenty of less-skilled jobs that need doing, he said.

"It's not like we're going to see grandma running the snowplow," he said. "There are lots of things people can do for the town and it wouldn't cost us that much to pay them."

The proposal has caused a stir in Greenburgh, a town of 90,000 in Westchester County, which has the nation's third-highest homeowner property taxes. The plan would be unusual if not unique in New York, but similar programs are considered successes in Colorado, Massachusetts, South Carolina and elsewhere.

Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes — perhaps $2,000 to the town — and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills.

Talking to Feiner last week at the town senior center, she said, "I would work as long as it was a job where I could sit."

"You could be a receptionist!" Feiner said. "You could greet people right here, when they come in."

"That I would love," Davison said.

Scott Parkin, spokesman for the National Council on Aging, said the program sounded interesting, as long as it wasn't limited to menial work. "It's certainly in line with what we stand for, keeping seniors involved in work or volunteering as a part of healthy aging," he said.

Boulder County, Colo., pioneered a tax workoff program in 1986 for residents over 60 and now has about 250 applicants for the fewer than 100 openings, said spokeswoman Barbara Halpin. The work done by the seniors includes landscaping, gathering climate data, clipping newspapers and staffing the courthouse information booth.

"Taxes aren't that high out here, so even at $7 an hour people can burn off their county taxes pretty quickly," Halpin said. She added that many stay in the program as volunteers after paying off their taxes.

In Concord, Mass., Maria Casey of the personnel department said about 10 seniors get $8.50 an hour to work at research, data entry and groundskeeping. The program, started in 1999, "allows seniors to be able to work and be involved in the community, and the town benefits by their work," she said.

Feiner is suggesting creating about 25 slots for seniors and letting them work off $500 or so a year. His proposal faces some obstacles. If the wages earned are to be tax-free and directly credited to the property tax bill, the state Legislature would have to approve. In addition, unions would have to be convinced that the program is no threat to their members' job security.

Feiner is hoping for at least a pilot program next year.

Eventually, he said, he would like to see the county and the local school districts adopt similar plans.

"If we got seniors working for the schools, there might be a more intergenerational feeling there," he said. "It might be easier to pass the school budgets."

Janet Goodman, a retired teacher and travel agent who was leading a knitting class at a Greenburgh community center, said paying the bills at her town house in Hartsdale, one of Greenburgh's seven villages, is "a constant struggle." She said she would gladly take part in a tax workoff program "as long as the work is interesting."

"You have to be creative," she said.

Mandatory Health Insurance Coverage

Insurance companies know that difficult times are coming. Massive personal debt and a shaky economy are forcing many Americans into cost reduction life adjustments. This will involve cutting their insurance burden. The insurance companies want to stop this income loss by having the government force Mandatory Health Insurance Coverage onto the public thus guaranteeing corporate profits.

This model was used by the banks with the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005. The financial establishments saw very bleak times ahead; mass bankruptcies would eat into their profits. Calling it bankruptcy reform the banks created state sanctioned indentured servitude by eliminating the ability to erase your debt.

Under the guise of universal health care the insurance companies will force American's into a broken system built to move wealth from the working class to corporate pockets without guaranteeing coverage. As long as corporate profits are the goal of the insurance companies the system will remain broken.

Premiums for a family of four in 2006 were roughly $11500. Research has shown that of the total insurance premiums used to cover hospital and physician care, 21 percent is spent on insurance administration. Another 13 percent is used to cover other administrative tasks. Only 66 percent of every insurance dollar is used for patient care. Compare this to Canada's national health insurance system which spends just 1.3% on overhead, and the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs having administrative costs of between 2-5%.

Additionally insurance companies vigorously deny payment on claims; deny insurance to the high risk populations or people with preexisting conditions; and charge higher premiums for people who have been without health insurance for a time. These practices are legal, encouraged and done to maximize corporate profits.

The United States is the only industrialized country to not offer universal health coverage to all its citizens. This country spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product on health care than any other nation but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance. Forty-five million are uninsured; an additional 50 million are under-insured. Free market based, for-profit health insurance does not work; why can't we just eliminate it in favor of a streamlined universal single-payer insurance system.

It has been estimated that a single-payer system would dramatically reduce administrative costs by at least $150 to $200 billion a year. Also the single-payer institution could drive the cost of health care down by negotiating contracts that award health care providers for prevention of illness rather than prolonging sickness for profit. Our current insurance system will not do this; if the public is kept sick they can charge more for premiums.

Police departments, fire departments and the public school system are examples of critical support structures that were institutionalized for the greater public good. Corporate greed is the only reason a universal single-payer insurance system is not in place today. Presidential candidates of both parties will release plans in the coming year talking about universal coverage. These plans are nothing but variations on mandatory coverage, authored by the bosses in the insurance industry and dressed up to look like universal coverage. The United States government is guaranteeing corporate profits at the expense of its citizens.

Mandatory coverage is not universal coverage and should be rejected

10 Steps to Fascism

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2. Create a gulag

3. Develop a thug caste

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

5. Harass citizens’ groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. Target key individuals

8. Control the press

9. Dissent equals treason

10. Suspend the rule of law

The full article by Naomi Wolf looks at each step in detail can be viewed here:

http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=943

Death of a Lifestyle

Dependence on Foreign Oil

In 2005 the United States consumed roughly 21 million barrels of oil daily compared to the global daily consumption of about 84 million barrels. Contrast these numbers with the 2002 daily statistics of 19 and 75 million barrels respectively. From 2002 to 2005 the United States oil production dropped from 8.1 to 5.1 million barrels per day, a production decrease of roughly 3 million barrels per day! Although we have approximately 20 billion barrels left under our feet this oil is of a lesser grade and much harder to pump thus driving the cost per barrel higher. Where does the rest of this oil come from and what will happen when that supply is no longer available.

Oil production peaked in the United States in 1970. This means from that point it cost more and more to pump oil with diminishing returns. The oil that is left in the ground is harder to reach and of a lesser grade. Additionally new reserves are not being found because they do not exist. This has forced the United States to import the majority of its oil.

In 2002 oil cost roughly twenty five dollars a barrel. Estimates show that the global production of oil peaked somewhere between 2005 and 2007. Current prices around one hundred dollars a barrel certainly bare this out. Not only has production peaked but global consumption is skyrocketing with the emergence of a strong middle class in India and China.

The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Additionally, Iraq was not invaded to guarantee the American people an uninterrupted supply of high quality oil. The invasion and subsequent occupation were conducted to secure the last stock of cheap oil for corporate interests. Due to unending war and frugality on Saddam Hussein part Iraq’s oil production is not set to peak until 2020 this means they have very cheap oil. Saudi Arabia and Iran’s oil production have both peaked in 2007 and 1998 respectively. Iran is running out of cheap oil this is why they are a threat to stability in Iraq. They are loosing their one resource and are just as desperate as the United States to secure an uninterrupted cheap oil supply. The companies that control the cheap oil will control the world. The United States armed forces will be protecting corporate interests in Iraq until the last drop of cheap oil is removed from the ground. It does not matter which party controls the White House our troops are there to stay.

The United States lives on oil. Every product you consume every trip you take requires oil. Anything plastic takes oil to make, all food produced in this country requires tractors and transportation that run on gasoline or diesel, both oil derivative. As the cost per barrel continues to climb what will happen to the cost of oil dependent products? Sixty eight percent of the oil consumed in the United States is for transportation. $100 a barrel oil will translate into roughly four to five dollar a gallon gas. It is estimated that $200 a barrel oil will bring eight to ten dollar a gallon gas. That’s $160 to $200 to fill up the twenty gallon tank on your SUV!

These escalating prices will not come down. It is taking more and more money to pump the oil out of the ground and as long as there is a demand these costs will be pushed onto the end consumer. Very few people in the United States can afford a mortgage payment equivalent in gas every month. The urban sprawl that we have created is not conducive to walking; very few subdivisions even have sidewalks. What is going to happen when the majority of Americans can not afford to drive to work let alone the grocery store? Will they sit quietly while they try to decide between the children getting feed or driving to work? They won’t sit quietly and the government knows it.

Population Control

The War on Terror is a front for placing surveillance and police control mechanisms in America. Billions have been funneled into local police departments to beef up intelligence gathering and detainment facilities. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains in-depth records on every American including purchases, travel and web activities. DHS monitors all communications through involvement with telecommunications companies and maintains a national privatized police force through contracts with mercenary groups like Blackwater USA. These private mercenaries can be called upon any time the local officials fail to carry out government orders.

DHS routinely conducts mass arrests in coordination with local police department. These are conducted under the name Operation Falcon and are dress rehearsal for future crackdowns on potential enemies of the state. The three Operation Falcon exercises conducted in April 2005, April 2006 and October 2006 netted 30,110 fugitives. Why does the DHS need to practice coordinated mass arrests and detentions. Who provides the detainees names? Is this the ultimate goal of the Terror Watch Lists which as of this writing contains 750,000 American names? If this is truly a foreign terrorist threat why so many American citizens.

It is interesting that the bulk of the money spent on deterring terrorists in the United States is directed towards surveillance and tracking of American citizens. If DHS was truly interested in foreign terrorists then they would secure the boarders and inspect the tons of cargo coming into our ports. A person with a vial of small pox could walk across our northern or southern boards at any time. A large nuclear device could easily be smuggled into an American city in a cargo shipping container from anywhere in the world. Why not invest these billions on a border fence or border surveillance system. Perhaps hire inspectors to investigate the millions of cargo containers coming into the country.

Clearly there is no foreign terrorist threat. The real threat comes from a displaced and unhappy population of American citizens, forced onto the streets by a lack of jobs, foreclosures and runaway gas prices. Up to this point in American history the government has never needed to track their own citizens. What has changed?

Controlled Economic Collapse

The United States is in a controlled economic collapse. For a global economy to work the playing field must be equal. Regions must compete with each other for the small amount of wealth shared by the corporate elite. Profits can only be maximized if this competition takes place. This cannot happen in a country with a strong wealthy middle class. The middle class in the United States is disappearing and the dollar is being devalued and eliminated so a more profitable North American Union can be established on the ruins of this once great empire. The wealth has been reallocated from this county to other nations and global corporations through trade deficits and government contracts. The American way of life must be destroyed for Globalization to work and for the United States to transition to a post oil economy.

Nice paying jobs in the technology and manufacturing fields are outsourced to countries with slave labor. This has destroyed the middle class in America. The service industry is replacing the higher end jobs at a salary of roughly one quarter. This was temporarily offset by the artificially inflated housing market; a well laid trap many Americans are now caught in. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were created in the real estate, construction and banking markets. These jobs helped slow the economic decline while control mechanism were established.

It also stuck home owners with mortgages considerably larger than the value of their home essentially tying them to their property. If they loose their jobs in this environment it is game over for the family; they will be on the street or squatting in their repossessed home.

You will be cold and trapped in your five thousand square foot McMansion trying to convert your decorative natural gas fireplace into something that will burn your $4000 oak dining room table for heat. The children are hungry; apparently that card board soaked in the last of the Wesson oil was not very filling. And you are dreading tomorrows ten mile hike through the snow to stand in the ration line at the local Salvation Army shelter.

Rather than helping the citizens of the country with direct support the congress will pass a Debt Relief Act. This bill will “protect” your family and home by allowing you to work off your debt as a laborer bound to the lending institution. Rather than starve, most will accept this “compassionate” option. Corporate profits skyrocket and the people become a commodity as the Globalists had envisioned. The Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, for all practical purposes, has already established this. You can only declare bankruptcy if you are below the median income level. If everyone is jobless and broke then no one qualifies for bankruptcy and you are forced to repay under a court order. The banks and corporate elite saw the end coming and have been planning for their continued profitable existence for many years.

In the very near future our farms and remaining oil infrastructure will be maintained with debt laborers. Your debts will not be erased with the collapse of our society, this is where that immaculate record keeping and tracking systems come in. Debt labor will be traded like oil is traded today. A corporate farm in Kansas needs 6000 workers to bring in the wheat crop. They call the Bank of America debt laborer department and arrange to have the indentured workers brought in on a train. For your work on the farm Bank of America credits your small earnings, less a processing fee of course, against the owed debt. The debt labor program allows your family to stay in the five thousand square foot McMansion you purchased plus a small food stipend redeemable at Wal-Mart. Fuel can be diverted from farming to policing and war efforts.

Trouble makers, perceived trouble makers, free thinkers and those who refuse to work will be labeled as radicals; rounded up and relocated to detention facilities. These detention camps are already built and ready to receive laborers.

As far as the cities go marshal law will be established with the flipping of a switch. The government will simply shut down the Visa network and close the gas pumps. They can then round up the radicals at their leisure. Private security personal, desensitized during their training in the carnage of Baghdad, will have no trouble shooting looters or anyone out after curfew. The citizens, after hearing of the roundups and killings, will quietly settle into their new way of life.