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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Homeless And Hungry American Children, and Chelsea Clinton's Five Million Dollar Wedding. What's Wrong With This Picture?

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Alexandra Pelosi has a new documentary showing on HBO, called "Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County." It's hearbreaking but well worth seeing.

The key economic problems facing these families are the grossly excessive run-up in the cost of housing (a bubble deliberately created by Greenspan and Wall Street to substitute for the tech bubble after Nasdaq collapsed), unemployment (the result of corporate trade deals which send jobs to other countries) and inadequate wages.

Most of these families have at least one person working full-time. Which, not that long ago, would have allowed these families to have a decent apartment or even a home, nutritious food, one parent at home to watch the kids, reliable transportation and clothing. But in today's world, with the crushing of American working people, all of that is gone. These children wander the streets of Anaheim at night watching the fireworks at Disneyland from a distance, usually hungry, searching through dumpsters for anything they can claim as their own. Since families are routinely evicted, the dumpsters contain the belongings of their former neighbors, the children's toys, yesterday's food. It's disgusting.

I'm thinking about Chelsea Clinton, a girl who has received the benefits of extreme privilege and wealth, and who decided that she would "give back" to the country by going to work for a hedge fund on Wall Street, and is now planning to marry another Wall Street scum. Chelsea has a new face and body (reportedly courtesy of the medical establishment) to fit her Wall Street life, and to show the world she is just like her despicable power- and money-hungry parents. They just reported that the Chelsea wedding will cost Five Million Dollars. I remember reading about Jimmy and Roslyn Carter's children doing things like going into the peace corps, becoming poverty workers, teachers -- giving back. Not Chelsea. She's a taker, like her parents.

I have a suggestion: maybe instead of Chelsea spending money like she's Anastasia in the last days, she could have a small wedding and give the Five Million Dollars she planned to waste on herself to the homeless families and children featured in this documentary. And to the homeless school that had been set up specifically to help these children, the wretched of the earth, who often spend nights sleeping in parks, and who rarely have enough to eat.

What do you say Chelsea? Do you think you've spent enough money on yourself now? Could you spare a nickel for the starving children of this country, children whose parents are unemployed because of what your parents did in sending their jobs to other countries. Sister, can you spare a dime?

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