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This is happening because we are allowing it. Corporate America wants us to be apathetic to the political process. They want us not to have faith in our system. And it has happened. We have three main candidates now with only one holding the possibilty of real change and that is only a possibility. Bill Moyers is right. We have lost our democracy when corporate leaders make 400 times the average worker. Of course, this doesn't prevent the idiot son from traveling the world urging others to give democracy a chance. The way out of this is to elect Obama and hope that he begins to battle the war machine, the greed merchants and fights to re establish a middle class in America.

We're definitely on the same wavelength, Lev. The question that nags me is how people can be tricked into voting against their own best interests time after time?

Yes, Moyers is a real voice in the wilderness, isn't he. Very few of his caliber around.

Would this be called "trickle up". Here in Babylon by the Bay, certain stretches of the city are known for the inhabited cars, campers, and trailers parked along the streets. Conventional wisdom is that these are homes to people poor to lower middle-class that are down on their luck. Perhaps that trend is creeping upward.

what is really depressing is that when it really hits people will look around dazed, asking; "Where did that come from?"
I guess that is the cost of hiding your head in the sand.

How can this be happening in America? Cartledge hit the nail on the head when he said "that is the cost of hiding your head in the sand." We experienced that firsthand in SE Michigan. We've been yelling about the effects of NAFTA and off-shoring for years, yet people just ignored us and told us to find another job. Now, years later, workers in other professions are waking up and starting to take notice. Great timing! They waited till the dam burst before saying anything and now it might be too late to save us.

One note about a line from that article: "These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers."

First program of its kind? While I appreciate the fact that people are safer sleeping in cars in lighted parking lots, I hope this won't replace the kind of real reform we need, i.e, expanding the voucher program for low income housing, raising the minimum wage to levels that people can actually live on, etc.

Kvatch, trickle-up is a good term for it. More and more people are gradually going under, but we're convinced we won't be among them. We look at those poor people living in their cars in SFO and shake our heads as we walk by. It's a shame, but it can't happen to us. Can it? It reminds me of the - you should pardon the expression - frog who doesn't notice until it's too late that he's swimming in a pot of water gradually being heated to boiling.

Cart, Americans are world-class head-hiders. We pretend not to see all kinds of inequities.

Kathy, I had the same thought about that line - "first of its kind." And yes, now that hard times are trickling up to people who pretty much felt insulated from them, maybe things finally will change. There are many, many more of us than of them. Maybe we'll finally stop voting for people who constantly have their hands in our pockets.