Send in the Clowns

(with apologies to Stephen Sondheim)

by Stephen Fleischman

In the United States of America, the greatest country in the world, as many as three and a half million people experience homelessness in a given year and of that, about a million and a half (39%) are children under the age of 18.

Isn’t it rich…?

The total number of billionaires in the world is 793 with 371 of them being in the United States of America, that’s about 322 more than there were 20 years ago.

Are we a pair…?

America has developed an underclass of its own that rivals the untouchables of India; except you don’t see them. An elaborate matrix has been constructed to keep them hidden. There are homeless shelters. Some find temporary shelter in church basements or abandoned buildings. They live in cars. They’re put in welfare motels. They double up with relatives. They are children. They are seniors. They are adults with full-time jobs.

Making my entrance again with my usual flair…

When too many of them start showing up soliciting on the streets, cleaning car windshields at traffic stop signs or sleeping on park benches, more shelters are build and they are again removed from sight.

I thought that you’d want what I want.

One American, in eight, lives below the official poverty line.

Me here at last on the ground…

The destruction of the middle class began during the Reagan Administration, in the 1980s, with the breaking of the labor movement and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. Those at the lowest end of the ladder fall even lower while there is an explosion of wealth at the top.

You in mid air.

Is that the nature of capitalism? There used to be a system of checks and balances and safety nets.

Don’t you love farce?

Is it the system, Stupid?

There was a time, in this system, when people mattered. When infrastructure mattered. When environment mattered. We had an NRA and a WPA and a Tennessee Valley Authority and a Living Newspaper, a Federal Theatre Project and a Farm Security Administration and ways of putting people to work.

Good riddance, you say. The depression is over. Let the private sector do it. Well, what goes around comes around. We may not be at ’29 but we may be sneaking up on ’28.

There are creeping signs that the capitalist structure is creaking again. Its nature is to boom and bust.

Losing my timing this late in my career?

Something’s got to be done about it! We have to send in somebody! Well, send in the clowns.

Don’t bother, they’re here.

Saturday Cartoons

Go see Bob Geiger.

Thanks Bob!

Karmageddon!

Trex has coined my new favorite colloquialism.

Karmageddon (Kar*ma*ged*don)

1. Of or pertaining to the karmic implosion of rich, smug, heiresses or the principal members of the Bush administration.