Welfare rolls explode as more Americans lack enough food to eat

Your'e welfare ain't like mine

It is hard to tell until it breaks out in to the open exactly how bad things are, what the real level of anger is in society.  As we always say, consciousness tends to lag behind events.  There is no doubt for example that there must be considerable demoralization within the ranks of the US military.  The severe treatment of Bradley Manning is a recognition of this by the top brass and the political representatives of US capitalism.  Manning's treatment is to serve as a warning to the young men and women in the ranks of the military to keep their mouths shut.

The ranks of the military are stretched to the limit, serving repeated terms in violent and and hostile locations with no end in sight.  Without a generalized revolt that can release some of the frustration and anger in the military and society as a whole, the domestic violence, family annihilation's, like the young serviceman that killed his pregnant wife, his three year old his dog and himself will continue.

The effect of the capitalist crisis is increasing the misery level of the US population and fostering the anger that already exists in society.  Areas that have had some of the lowest levels of food stamp use in the US are seeing drastic changes in their populations.  Utah had a 34% increase in food stamp use between Dec. 2009 and Dec. 2010.  Other states, not normally used to such conditions had similar hikes, Nevada a 25% increase and Idaho's foodstamp use was up a whopping 42% for fiscal year ending September 30 2010.

You can understand why many poor people in the former colonial world or eastern Europe or places like this think we all live in big houses with lawns and picket fences over here.  Watching the garbage that is US television from the ads to the sitcoms (with one or two exceptions, sorry, I'm a Seinfeld nut) you would never know the level of misery and insecurity that exists in US society.  (We have 2 million in prison don't forget). "We didn't have enough food to last a week, so I looked at my wife and said 'It's time'", one Idaho construction worker tells the Wall Street Journal.  Construction has been savaged in this recession and many construction workers have lost homes. Idahoans claiming foodstamps have risen every month, from 87,232 or 5.8% of the population in 2007 to 223, 347 and 14% of the pop at present.  There are more than 44 million Americans receiving foodstamps (these days they are issued a debit card) just over 13% of the population. Contrary to the propaganda, most poor people in the US are white obviously because there is more of them, but among the black population in particular, the effects of such an economic tsunami have made what was a crisis situation already a catastrophic one.

We can only imagine the effect of these objective facts on the consciousness of what has been a somewhat conservative population. Idaho, for example was the first state to pass a bill to block the federal overhaul of the health care system.  This is the state that was home to the Western Federation of Miners, the founding and dominant Union in the old IWW and home to Big Bill Haywood.

These states were a sort of "pick-you-up-by-the-bootstraps" type of existence says one Idaho official.  This term is used to brainwash the US working class population in to thinking that the rich get rich through hard work, an individual effort.  They put a cowboy hat on the imbecile Bush's head and a chainsaw in his hand and do a photo shoot and there he is, the cowboy, the hard working American who worked so hard he was able to become president and own a baseball team.  As I have said before, we are the first victims of the ideological war waged by the US bourgeois on its population.  This war is more effective on the white male population in particular.  People of color, women the youth, are much less effected by it but it has had a strong influence in the past, less so now as objective reality has hit people over the head big time.

Look at the insanity of the capitalist system.  That sh#@t hole Las Vegas is in Nevada.  It describes itself as "sin city". I remember the punk band the "Circle Jerks" being banned or denied a venue many years ago because of their name.  This place is insane, Las Vegas, the home of gambling, prostitution and pimping and its offended by the name "Circle Jerks".

Speculators and land pimps built so many houses in the suburbs of Las Vegas they're going for a song now.  No planning, no thoughts given to the environment, no concern for anything but the rate of return on the cash laid out, borrowed cash at that.  And houses a plenty there may be but no one can afford to buy them and the moneylenders won't lend.

This is madness.  This country's going to explode at some point.