I have been too depressed since the re-election of the bastard to write much here or anywhere else. The news on America's homefront is very, very bad. Bush's social policies are not about fiscal responsibility. He goes before Congress to get another 40 billion for the genocide in Iraq rubber-stamped by a complacent governing body made up of fellow party members. The dirty little secret that no US paper or media outlet will report is that Bush and his storm troopers continue to carry out a policy that will result in the eventual needless deaths of thousands of America's disabled and elderly. The government currently expects millions of disabled and elderly Americans to live on $550 a month from Social Security. Meanwhile, the social security funds have been raided to the tune of almost a trillion dollars to feed the hungry maw of the department of defense and America's killing machine. The housing voucher program which meant the difference between life indoors or life on the streets is slowly being dismantled. At this point the housing voucher program in every state is frozen. Many who had been awarded housing vouchers are now seeing them being taken away. There is a scene in Leon Uris's book "Mila 18" about the Jewish uprising against the Nazi's in Warsaw's Jewish ghetto during the second world war. A Jewish family with their elderly father in a wheelchair are just sitting down to their meager dinner when suddenly the storm troopers burst through the door. The handicapped have been designated as "useless eaters" by the Hitler regime, and the storm troopers lift the man, wheel chair and all, and toss him from the upper story window of the family's apartment. Bush is doing the same thing today. No one covers it because it's less dramatic, but the effect of the cuts is no different. How long can an 80 year old woman be expected to survive on the streets? How about a man with profound cerebral palsy? No one cares.

I don't think anyone reads this, but I guess it's good practice for more public venues. Soooo, today I called up the local Independent Living Center (by way of reference, Independent Living Centers are Federally mandated outfits which supposedly help the disabled to find housing and work). My friendly ILC told me that there has been a freeze on housing vouchers for the disabled (and everyone else) since June. What this amounts to, folks, is federally mandated genocide of an undesirable group. Strong words, but stop and think about it. You are too ill, or too physically disabled to hold down a nine to five job; you are not some asshole who filed a questionable lawsuit against some individual and got megabucks, and your disability is not work related, so you don't get workman's comp. You turn to the government of the United States of America (remember all those social security taxes you've been paying all these years?); and after a two to five year or more bitter wait, you at long last get YOUR SSDI "award" if you're still alive. What do they give you back? In my case a lousey $625.00 a month plus $140.00 in food stamps. I worked for 30 years, folks, and paid my taxes like a good girl and that's what my American government gives me back on my hard paid taxes. Anybody out there wanna try living on an income like that, hmmm...? Rent, food, utilities, transportation, clothing (from thrift shops, of course), all the many medical expenses that Medicare (Surprise!) won't cover. An abled bodied person couldn't survive on that amount, never mind those of us on disability where even the most common, everyday task is a nightmare. Take away our housing vouchers and put us out on the streets, and what do you think will happen to us? Don't everybody shout "Sig Heil!" all at once. Jesus Christ! Why isn't there more reporting of this, why isn't there any outrage? OK, all you white bread, middle class revolutionaries can go back to sleep now...

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Looking at the prospect of being on the streets. Well, I guess the streets are as good a place for a revolutionary as any, although getting internet access through the public library is a real pain - packed in shoulder to shoulder like lemmings all charging together off a cliff of virtual reality. I wrote up a draft of a letter to my congressman which I include for anyone's perusal: Senator Wayne Allard I am disabled and currently recieving $625.00 a month from SSDI plus $140.00 a month in food stamps. I have no other income of any kind. Last year I was homeless from July until October and lived camped alone on the San Miguel River in western Colorado. Once a month I drove 30 miles into the town of Nucla to get a box of food that the local church distributed to the area's poor. My story appeared in the Colorado Springs Independent last December (please see enclosed copy). Thanks to the great kindness of that paper's readers, especially a gentleman who was a retired Lt. Colonel in the USAF and the fact that my SSDI award finally came through this March, I was able to pay the rent on a small cottage in xxx through Feburary, 2005. I am 53 years old, divorced with no children, an only child whose parents are now dead. I have no family to turn to. I did not understand about the housing voucher program (section 8) and did not get on the waiting list for a voucher until January of 2004. I called the local housing authority for Colorado Springs and got a recorded message saying that they are currently working with people who got on the list in 2002. I called the regional HUD office in Denver and was given a number to an office here in Colorado Springs (I'm sorry I can't remember its name - one of my difficulties is short term memory loss and I try to write everything down, but sometimes I loose my notes). The woman I spoke to said that the only program they have available is for people who are able to work. I have gone to the local Independent Living Center and they just look sad and shrug their shoulders. Everywhere I try, they just look sad and shrug their shoulders. Someone told me that there is supposed to be some sort of emergency housing voucher list for the disabled who will face homelessness without assistance. I asked about this at the local Colorado Springs Housing Authority, and they looked sad and shrugged their shoulders. Can your office please help me with an emergency housing voucher? I face severe emotional/psychological handicaps as well as the difficulties I have from a mild traumatic brain injury due to prolonged exposure to carbon monoxide from a faulty home furnace. I am unable to leave my home for days at a time due to severe anxiety and depression. The last time I tried to go somewhere I walked around for 15 minutes looking for my car key that I was holding in my hand the entire time. When I first moved in here, my landlord came to my door and I didn't know who he was. I just lost $200 that I desperately needed when I cashed my SSDI check and put the cash I got back into a Safeway bag that either got thrown out or stolen. I can't remember what happened. Please, I need help. I won't make it on the streets or in the Red Cross Shelter next Feburary. I know that you are very pro military. My father was career military - 30 years in the US Army- and served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam (two tours). I myself worked from the ages of 18 until I was 46 or so when this happened to me. I would work again if I could only rehabilitate myself, but right now I am too frightened and overcome with despair to do anything. I have been days writing you this letter. I can't find my paperwork or anything to do with my original HUD housing voucher application. If anybody in your office actually ends up getting and reading this letter, it will be a miracle. What good does it do the citizens of this country if we spend billions fighting a war we can't win in Iraq and rebuild that country with endless tax payer dollars while our own people stand in the winter cold with signs which read "Homeless, Please Help"? I think we no longer have a government of the people, we have a government of Halliburton and corporations like that. I don't have $2,000.00 or $2,000,000.00 to slip in this envelope for a campaign contribution. I am just one of your constituents who you are suppposedly serving in Congress. I am an American. My father dedicated his life to serving our nation. Please help me. My phone number is xxx; mailing address xxx. Thank you. Sincerely, xxx

This is a strange site. I can't figure it out. It seems to consist of mostly blogs and random articles from random cyber-beings. If anyone actually discusses anything, I have yet to find the discussion. The whole thing seems to be run by a computer with no human hand in evidence (shrugs). Well, its as good as writing letters on the walls of the bathrooms down at social services. So yesterday I wrote one of my elected (Hah!)representatives about my situation. I got a computer generated letter from him too, thanking me for my input. Well, what did I expect? Maybe if I was a CEO at Halliburton with a few million to slip in an envelope, I might have gotten the courtesy of a reply written by one of my senator's junior staff members. I read some article blogged on this site from the BBC (I think) about 10 year old Afghani girls being sold off into marriages so that their families could eat. I could do something like that. I've got a standing offer for marriage from a man I don't love who lives in a place that makes me feel crushed by despair everytime I visit. This man is in his 60's and chances are I'd end up nursing him for god knows how many years, but I'd be indoors and I'd be warm and have food and clothes. If a little 10 year old girl can sell herself, why can't I? No guts, that's what it is. I've started going over my camping gear. I can probably hold off eviction until sometime next Spring and then head out for the wilds somewhere and make camp. On Federal land you're theoretically supposed to move every two weeks, but that's only if they discover you. I figure I could potentially hold out one way or another until about a year from now. The trouble is, I don't see how I can survive a winter camped on the National Forest. Is ANYONE out there? .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

So last night I stayed up 'till 2:00 am desperately searching HUD's double-speak web site for any escape clause, any way out of my coming second round of life on the San Miguel River. It's unbelievable - all those smiley/smiley headlines on the site and then you start wading into the rules and regs and the current funding estimates. Things are going to get worse, folks, NOT better. Bush is proposing MORE cuts in 2005! (Why,I wonder? Maybe because Halliburton et al only can feed off the government gravey train for construction projects in third world countries that the US has already torn to pieces. No gain to be had by helping people in THIS country). When are the American people going to WAKE up? There are literally millions of American people just like me, disabled through no fault of own who didn't have private disability insurance or fat cat lawyers to get us some multi-million settlement for some supposedly negligent act on the part of some other person or entity. We want to work and can't. We want medical help and can't get it. We want that most basic human need met - shelter over our heads against the cold of the coming winter. What does the government give us instead? An illegal war which serves no purpose and cost the tax payers billions of dollars. The entire social security system could be funded till the end of time with the money the US has squandered in pointless wars against helpless third world nations. Never mind the loss of American lives. Anyone ever been to the Vietnam War Memorial in D.C.? I have, and I had to sit down and lean against that wall and weep. Are there ANY human beings left in my country? -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Last Spring the office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) made the decision to cut $200 million from its housing voucher program (also known as the Section 8 program). HUD had no requirement to take this step, in fact the funds for Housing Vouchers had already been fully authorized by Congress. HUD administraters apparently were simply reacting to the current climate of the Bush administration in general. The cut translates to some 600,000 American families being left to go with nowhere but the streets over the next two years. I am one of those Americans. I am disabled and my sole income is $625 a month from SSDI plus $140 a month in food stamps. When I finally recieved my SSDI award I used the money to move indoors and pay the rent on a small cottage up 'till next Feburary. Up until October a year ago I had been homeless, camped on the banks of the San Miguel River in western Colorado while I awaited word on my disability appeal. I didn't get on the housing voucher wait list until last January. At that time the wait list in Colorado was a year and a half long. Now with the cuts, the wait has extended to almost 4 years. I am 53 years old, divorced with no children; I am an only child and my parents are now deceased. I have nowhere to go, but back to the San Miguel River. Meanwhile, the US is projecting to spend at least 40 BILLION to rebuild Iraq. Iraqui people who are the bitter enemies of this country will have a roof over their heads while 600,000 Americans will be sent to live on the streets or camp on National Forest land like me. What is wrong with our country?