2001-02-19 - 19:11 MST

February 19, 2001

Why ?

I am not an erudite person, or a highly trained rocket scientist or economist just the ordinary peon who has worked and raised his family the best way he could. As they used to say when the reference meant anything, "I am like horse apples, I've been over the road." Along the way I have picked up a method of life which enabled me to gain a bit of common sense. At least I hope to think so.

Ever since I could read a newspaper with a bit of understanding, there have been conferences, summit meetings, etc. which in the end amounted to world leaders gathering around a banquet table eating, sipping champagne seemingly conferencing with the attitude of solving the problem of world poverty, "What can we possibly do to solve the problem of world poverty ?" they say, and make grandiose plans, throw money indiscriminantely hither and tither. Transport shiploads of food and material to decay on some far flung foreign dock, or be diverted to benefit the ones in power rather than give help where it is needed. Down the road a few years, looking back it is obvious that it didn't help much. And then the next round of those who didn't learn from history, are doing a re-run of the same thing. Alcoholic thought, you know, doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results each time.

As a kid, as an adult and now as an old geezer the big question in my mind is this: if none of our "World Powers" can take care of the poverty in the midst of their own high powered, so called civilization, how can we possibly do anything concrete to help alleviate the poverty of the third world countries ?

In my town, and I expect in any of our towns there are people on the edge of starvation, living in substandard quarters, working for wages that are totally insufficient to keep one person going who are trying to raise a family.

There are whole areas in our country where people do not have the advantages of the rest of the people in other areas.

I our area, schools in the poorer areas are most unsatisfactory, thus not fitting the poorer kids to earn a living when and if they graduate. Now we have the "Charter" schools and eventually the vouchers which cause even more problems.

Those that have dismiss the problem by saying, "They don't care, they don't want to have better, they won't work, they are alcoholics and / or drug addicts, they prefer to be homeless, totally worthless." A certain percent of those people are that way because they want to be, yes don't care, yes. A certain percent are mentally disturbed people who have been turned out of mental care facilities, classified as being able to take care of themselves, yes. But I think that totalled together they all are a low percentage of the people who want to, and can work if there is a job open for them. A certain percentage are people who have been laid off from jobs that were once considered to be secure. Who have lost their homes, cars and bank accounts. A homeless person cannot get a job if he or she does not have an address.

I feel that we have so much mismanaged, misspent and filched funds in one form or another that all those in want could at least have shelter, clothes, food and the opportunity to use the facility they are in as bonafide addresses to obtain work. They should have the retraining facilities to enable them to work in existing jobs.

It looks to me that even here in our country, between corporations and government our people are being treated as throw away packaging no longer needed, disregarding the humans inside.

I was an innocent person, as a child, living through the "Great Depression" (yeah, Great, until one bigger comes along) seeing men who had been competently doing their jobs suddenly out of work and no work to be found. I remember the hopeless looks in the faces of people adrift, who had families to care for and no way to do so. I remember the freight trains passing near where I lived, carrying as hobos men moving from city to city riding in gondolas, flat cars loaded with a scant load, empty boxcars being deadheaded - - - desperately looking for a job - work - not help, but work. Sometimes the cars were crammed with men.

We now have families who once lived in posh homes, once had their BMW's, once had credit cards that hadn't been maxed out, who are now homeless, hoping to find enough work to live in the scrubbiest housing, buy survival food and hope to find clothing fit to wear at the Goodwill.

We are as a nation ambivalent about citizens from south of our borders. By word of mouth, we don't want them here. But by actions from way back by financial groups even before I was born these people were being brought to my area to do the scut work, the stoop work that would let them live from hand to mouth in the sugar beet fields. Yeah some of those nice prices we paid for what we got was because of the illegal migrant labor. That sort of thing still exists, we now have unsafe tractors and semi-trailers coming into our country from the south which are illegal to use if owned by one of us. I really don't see NAFTA as a success, rather a degradation of the lives of the citizens of the United States.

We have shipped our manufacturing processes to foreign countries where labor is cheaper - - - but still charge outrageous prices here in country for their products. From what I head Nike is guilty of that.

In 1977 I went to work for a giant corporation, one arm of which was manufacturing. I observed the electronic chips and dips from places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan being used to build American made products. Later on I saw the same corporation shooting video tape of production operations, later shipping the tapes and machines plus maybe one of our citizens as an expert to a maquiladora or some foreign land where due to the fact that there were no laws on wages, pollution, safety, health care and that also the wages were super low to begin with managed to leave many of our people scrambling for jobs at the Golden Arches or worse.

The bigwigs and double dome eggheads try to say, "Well our people will be doing more technical work, we don't need that other stuff, we have progressed beyond that, times have changed." Yeah, riiiight!

A few figures from Holger Jensen an international editor whose column can be read in the Denver Rocky Mountain News edition of February 18 (cannot get a url that will work) World wide 60 % of the population enjoy (get that enjoy bit) only 6 % of the resources. Nearly half of the world's 6 billion people live on less that $2.00 a day, 1.2 billion (22%) survive (?) on $1.00 a day. Included are 500 million in South Asia and 300 million in Africa. So as has been said, "The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

"Mr. Jensen goes on about the world performance to date for a full column and ends it with, "the United States has the word's richest economy, it spends only one-tenth of one percent (lessee, is that 0.01 % ?) of GNP on foreign aid -- and the bulk of that is in arms and military aid. So basically the doodly squat we are doing is not in developmental aid.

Yet, yet, we have our own people here in our county who need helpful aid -- not gifts or charity but aid in the way that will help them in time to be able to be out of poverty and self respecting again. Let's do that first -- then see what we can do about the world situation.

Mr. Jensen also says that Interaction, a coalition of more than 160 U.S. based private voluntary organizations say that of the 22 donor countries, ours ranks at the bottom of the generosity league.

So it seems as if no matter how it is looked at nationally or internationally, Diddly Squat 'r' Us

Why ? . . . . . . .

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