Charley James: If it was not for the financial floor provided by Social Security and Medicare, there is a significant risk that many of the nation’s elderly would be destitute, sick and homeless.
Romney Channels Monty Python
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Charley James: This morning, I finally figured it out. Mitt Romney is an upper class twit. He’s the living, breathing, personification of the classic Monty Python’s sketch.
Screwing Banks That Screwed the Homeless
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Charley James: Since the onset of the Great Foreclosure Adventure launched by banks and mortgage companies in 2007 causing the housing market collapse, the financial industry has done a great job of screwing the homeless twice, and without any foreplay or even a kiss.
Downwardly Mobile Americans End Up Homeless
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Charley James: First they came for the working poor. Then they came for the lower middle class. Now, they are after the middle and upper middle classes. Next, they’ll come for the … 98-percenters.
Homeless Teens Have Double Trouble
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Charley James: Homeless children often feel angry about being forced into a situation that is totally out of their control. It’s especially a problem for teens who are grappling with establishing their own identity yet find themselves unable even to have something as basic as a bit of privacy.
Homelessness: Cheaper to Fix Than to Let Fester
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any of the social, economic and political ills facing the United States will cost tens of billions to fix, from updating the power grid and building a high-speed rail network to dealing with climate change and revitalizing public education. Solving the problem of homelessness should be easy because it will cost billions less to fix [...]
Suddenly Homeless: Craig and Mark Don’t Count
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Charley James: Technically they aren’t counted as being homeless anymore because they now live in a house rather than on the street. Some activists think this distorts the numbers downward, masking the true extent of the problem.
Just Call Mitt Gatsby!
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he rich truly are different than the rest of us, as Dorothy Parker observed many decades ago, and they proved it Sunday afternoon at a trio of Mitt Romney fundraising events in The Hamptons on Long Island. Revlon chairman Ronald O. Perelman, Clifford Sobel who is a former US ambassador to Brazil, and David Koch [...]
Suddenly Homeless: A Kid’s Story
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A reported 1.6-million American kids were homeless at some point last year, and half are under the age of six. That’s roughly the number of people in Philadelphia.
Suddenly Homeless: The Invisibles
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Charley James: While the national poverty rate is around 13%, it’s more than 15% in rural areas and is a primary cause of homelessness.
Suddenly Homeless: Kids With No Roof
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Charley James: Homeless children not only are robbed of their childhood but also suffer at school so their situation is likely to affect them the rest of their lives.
Despite ACA, John Roberts Is No Earl Warren
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Charley James: Justice John Roberts has refused to corral his equally conservative Associate Justices from selling their integrity to right-wing political groups and causes.
Suddenly Homeless: Wasted Lives
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Charley James: It is a constant struggle to keep focused, to keep writing because it is my work, and to look for a sustainable way of getting back a bit of the life I lost.
“Our Disgrace”
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Charley James: One out of six Americans or 17% of us who think we live in the bread basket of the world don’t have enough to eat. More than 16 million of these people are children who go to bed hungry.
Gimme Shelter
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Charley James: I’ll never forget the eyes of the men with whom I’d be spending the night. The blank stares on some, the hollow look in others, those that were wary and weary, those that revealed fear bordering on terror, a few reflected hatred of who knows what.
Whispers of Life
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Charley James: When I became homeless and lost regular access to people I knew, I lost my connection to the whispers of life.
Eat on the Street: Battling Daily Hunger
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Charley James: This is how America treats people on the bottom rung; I see and live it every day. As Jake Landow put it, “That ain’t the America I grew up in.”
The Ultimate Indignity
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Charley James: Homeless people are too visible to ignore; we’re in even city, town, village and hamlet. We’re easily overlooked but there’s no way of claiming, “There’s no problem here.”
Losing My Prince
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Charley James: The only thing that’s possibly more devastating than finding yourself on the street is having to let a friend take care of a beloved pet because you are homeless.
Living Rough
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his business of moving from place to place every night is totally new to me. I was in my last home for six years, nine for the one before it and seven in a previous residence. By the standards of people who truly are living rough – sleeping in shelters, at bus stops and in [...]
Waiting Forever
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Charley James: When you have a lot, getting a little is easy; when you have nothing, getting out takes a herculean toll: Physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, spiritually.
Ben Bernanke, Bill’s Daughters and the Fed’s “Hard Won Credibility”
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Charley James: Chairman Bernanke may well be boxed in by the Fed’s much-to-cautious ruling board of bank presidents but there’s no reason why he cannot use his very public platform to jawbone the governors into action.
Living Edgewise
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Charley James: Living edgewise means not knowing if you will sleep indoors tonight, or if you can eat today and whether anyone knows if you’re alive or sick or dead or lying bleeding in a gutter because somebody wanted your almost-new backpack.
Herds on the Street
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Charley James: For the first time in well over 15,000 consecutive nights, I will not have a roof over my head this evening. I don’t know where I will sleep, how I will eat tonight
Let’s Pick on the Unemployed Some MORE!
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hanks to Republicans in Congress and their friends in state capitols, the chronically unemployed – five million who have been out if work for 26 weeks or more – are losing another strand in the already razor-thin lifeline that has kept them afloat. As The New York Times reported Tuesday when House and Senate Republicans agreed [...]
The Religious Right: Our Age of Unreason
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Charley James: We still face a near-daily pummelling by the religious right and its political spearchuckers who insist that only when America bows to a specific, narrow Christian version of a god will eternal peace and prosperity shine upon us.
Canada’s Prime Minister Finally Exposes His Christian Right, Anti-Abortion Agenda
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Charley James: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper always swore he had no interest in changing Canada’s pro-choice laws and abortion availability. But in recent days, he revealed his true, anti-choice, hard right, nature.
That Damn Pope
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Charley James: For how long will the Pope and Tiger Woods and John Ensign and Mark Foley and scores of other hypocritical politicians, and damn near every celebrity, real and pretend, think they can keep saying “Whoops, sorry! Didn’t mean it.” to make all well with the world again?
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Charley James Returns: Now, What Was I Saying … ?
Charley James: I’d turned my back on modern health care to wait for Godot after a virulent cancer returned for the third time. Then, traditional Chinese medicine did what regular docs couldn’t. I beat the odds and was coming back – until a 1%-er caught up with me. Over the past three years, my life got turned upside down. Just like America’s.