No Bailouts for Jobless and Homeless

In the porkathon to pass the bailout bill, Republicans balked at two measures--to extend jobless benefits for the unemployed and allow bankruptcy judges to reduce penniless homeowners' mortgages.

So much for Main Street, where signs of a 1930s Depression are cropping up everywhere:

*New figures show 760,000 lost jobs this year. Of the 9.5 million Americans out of work, two million have been for more than six months. Nearly 6.1 million people are working part-time because worsening business conditions have led to fewer hours and less pay.

*With bank-account insurance increased from $100,000 to $250,000, the potential liability of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for failing banks is now estimated to be $1.1 trillion. The FDIC's fund currently has about $45 billion, a five-year low.

*The number of Americans on food stamps, growing every month, was 28.6 million in June, according to latest government figures, reaching the level of late 2005, when Katrina and other hurricanes caused widespread suffering.

*Homeless families in Massachusetts motels have increased from 17 to 588 in the past year, with another 1,800 in shelters.

In my Depression childhood, everyone in our neighborhood was poor and many penniless until FDR and the New Deal began to bail us out with relief programs. In the 21st century, the government so far is concentrating on banks, investment houses and hedge funds.

We'll soon find out if the trickle-down theory works.

Good and Bad News About Iraq

Iraqis are going home in Baghdad, and veterans of the war are starting to live on the streets back here.

Another day of weird news dramatizes the Bush-Cheneying of America as the Commander of US forces in Baghdad tells a New York Times reporter over a Green Zone lunch of egg rolls and lo mein that hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced families are back in their homes.

“The Iraqi people have just decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence,” according to Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified.

From Washington comes another Times report: "More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead."

Former soldiers are ending up on the streets sooner than Vietnam vets did, and some of them are women. Roughly 40 percent of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted by American soldiers while in the military. “Sexual abuse is a risk factor for homelessness,” according to Pete Dougherty, the VA’s director of homeless programs.

As Congress ponders the Administration's request for $200 billion to pay for another year of promoting democracy in Iraq, they may want to consider setting some of that aside for the Surge of young men and women we sent there who are now psychologically and physically homeless back here.

Should the British Build an Ark?

While coping with the wave of car bombings, the most unflappable people on earth were being warned of even greater disaster this weekend.

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, is telling them that recent floods around the country “are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence...We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused."

The Bishop, a leading evangelical, made it clear that the floods, which have left thousands homeless, were brought on by recent legislation approving gay marriage.

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, joined in the warning: "Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

The weekend forecast calls for more torrential rainstorms. There was no word on how “other life forms” would be chosen if an ark were built.