[SamIam]

~We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming in order to bring you the following important message~

I'm sure there's some snappy term for giving facts a pejorative label instead of dealing with them. Oh yeah - denial.

Two hot button issues are always headlined in the current legislative debate - Planned Parenthood and the Environment - also known as "abortion" and "global warming". Everybody loves to debate these two subjects. They are the shiny objects that both the legislature and the media use to distract the public from consideration of far more grave issues.

Here are some FACTS in regard to a single funding issue now under debate (or deadlock as the case may be) - HOUSING.

Housing, health care, education, food, community legal services, and programs for low income children, seniors, and people with disabilities are under attack. The Republican side of the Legislature is proposing:

5.5 billion in HUD (Housing and Urban Development) cuts.

43% or $1.072 billion cut to Public Housing Capital Fund.

71% or $551 million cut to Section 202 housing for seniors.

70% or $210 million cut to Section 811 housing for disabled people.

$149 million cut to Public Housing operating Fund.

$104 million cut to Section 8 Voucher Program.

These cuts will put thousands of low income seniors, disabled, and children out on the streets. These are the most vulnerable members of our population and the ones least able to defend themselves.

What do you think is going to happen to a frail elderly gentlemen who suddenly has his housing taken out from under his feet? What is going to happen to the 4-year old child who must live in an overcrowded shelter by night and on the streets by day? What is going to happen to the schizophrenic who has been barely holding on, but compliant with her meds who must suddenly navigate the urban streets alone and loses her meds when someone at the shelter steals her back pack?

I'll give it to you straight - two out of three of these people will die. I am not being overly dramatic here. Even with the current levels of support, and with medical issues factored in, a low income person with disabilities will die 25 YEARS sooner than the average American man or woman. You put the three people above out of their homes and they are going to be exhausted, bewildered, and subject to predators and opportunistic diseases - just to name a few. THEY WILL NOT MAKE IT.

Your very own SamIam will not make it. I will be sixty in September and suffer from a disability. I am spunky and I am a fighter. Despite my age, I am attempting to go through voc-rehab and be eligible to perform more productive work than what I now do as a motel clerk, part time for $5.00/hr. But I cannot overcome the triple whammy of age, disability, and homelessness.

Yes, the well has been poisoned and the legislature would have me and thousands of others of your fellow Americans drink from it.

Fuck Congress. I won't support any legislative body that wants to kill me.

~You are now returned to your standard name-calling and abortion debate.~