Randi Rhodes Forums

...Before today, Washington Park’s homeless already felt threatened, especially by the city’s $47 million plan to renovate the park that sits across Elm Street from Music Hall and is in the backyard of the new School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

“This is not good,” said Latricia Harrell, 21. “People here are not happy.”

Polk, nicknamed “Eagle Eye” by those who frequent the park, was interviewed Tuesday by the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which has taken over the investigation along with the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office to avoid conflicts of interest.

A 25-year veteran of the department, Polk is assigned to the park unit, Cincinnati Police Chief Tom Streicher said. Polk will be tested for drugs and alcohol, as required by department policy. It was unclear Tuesday if he would be placed on leave.

People at the park said he generally treats them with respect and is the type to ask people to pour out cans of beer instead of ticketing them, Gross said.

“He was so distraught. It was clearly an accident,” she said. “But I know people won’t see it that way. A lot of people are angry.”

The tunnel people of Las Vegas: How 1,000 live in flooded labyrinth under Sin City's shimmering strip


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z14tNF6vsN

A homeless man finds a version of serenity in the heart of Detroit


It's another spring morning in Tom Bell's backyard. Birds whistle from the bare branches above, squirrels jump through the crispy leaves below, and another day of being alone, another day of nothingness, lies ahead.

Bell is homeless, but only in the official sense. Because when he found this place a decade ago, he made it a real home.

He lives by the river in a tent he pitched atop a tall concrete mound, so high you'd never see him up there if you weren't looking for him.

"I have no phone, no address, no identity either," says the 56-year-old Bell, who's thin, with a shabby beard and a helmet of hair flecked with gray.

His hidden perch is next to a potholed alley, surrounded by a strand of clustered trees and a row of old warehouses left empty years ago. It's a neglected, forgotten corner of the city, one where he can live undisturbed by little else but the sounds of the weather and the animals that share his space. Yet rising from the horizon, just a handful of streets away, are downtown's towering skyscrapers. Bell has managed to find nature's serenity in the heart of the city.

Ten years ago he was living under a freeway overpass. Then, in his wanderings, he came across this mammoth concrete embankment, the remains of an ancient elevated railroad track. He climbed a tree to peek up top, surveyed the strange landscape he found there and decided this was the place for him.

"This is one of the best homeless spots I've ever seen," he says. He went from living in the shadows to basking in the sun, in a world all to himself. And with his find, he claimed one of the most extraordinary places to live a most extraordinary life.

He has no past to dwell on, no future to plan, no job to go to. For him, time is meaningless. The days blend into weeks that become years of sameness, and every moment is the pure essence of now.......................

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged Royal Oak's law that banned all begging.

The amended ordinance will allow begging but will prohibit offensive or threatening forms of panhandling, including touching a solicited person, blocking a person's path or using abusive language, the city said.........

Weston, Florida (AP)-- Authorities say a South Florida man committed suicide by dousing himself with gasoline and then lighting a fire.

The Broward Sheriff's Office identified the man Wednesday as 65-year-old Armando Barrientos of Weston........

.......Authorities say Barrientos had become despondent after losing a job. They say he had recently moved to South Florida .......

Solitary Man

prayer for the children. they see loss more vivedly than most..
as around town sunday. running errands, when i drove through an unsavory part of town. i passed a child walking along the road. this road was narrow and curved, mountainous. on my way back, i saw him again only he had walked a great distance. this child looked no more than 9. i slowed and asked if he needed help, a ride. he replied that he did. i told him i would take him where he needed to go. less than five minutes for a drive, almost 30-1 hour for a walk. forgive my judgment as soon as he sat in the car, i could smell him. he was shirtless, had worn out jeans and shoes and looked as if clean laundry had become a luxury. first i wondered where his parents were, next i wondered about my safety. i was nervous and i babbled. it's what i do when i get nervous. i learned his real age which he stated as 14, and his name. i told him i used to work at the library for whatever reason. he replied, a sadness in his voice, "we used to get books there", as he dropped his head down. i dropped him where he wanted to go, and stated "take care".

i wonder if there was more i could do.

i also can't help but wonder how many other children are out there who are like him. clean clothing a luxury. parents missing in action in their own reality far removed from responsibility, or the horror that is their day to day. when you are a parent, that is what some forget. the fact that children share your hell. if you are blissfully unaware due to the trap of addiction, abuse of any kind, psychological burden, children see it, and sometimes (if not always) they see first, full tilt. the dearest beings on this plane of existence have no blinders to their deity. as it's been said mother is God in the eyes of the child, children see the manifestation of your wounds even when you can't or refuse to. the wounds you have as a parent, if not carefully guarded, can become their wounds. even worse, your wounds can be their poison.

i can't help but think a part of this stems from our economic woes. whatever the reason, there will have to be a great deal of healing for many of the future generations.

whatever joy this child had at one point in time, i pray he and others like him find again.

i wish i could have done more.

While most Americans are just trying to survive the recession or dig out, the nation's poor are just getting poorer. And so are their children.

The debate in Washington, and among those who want to get to Washington, is nearly always about those who have and how to get them more. But, increasingly, the nation's most urgent business must be how to stop those who have nothing from losing even the hope that they might someday climb the economic ladder.

The poverty rate hit a 17-year high in 2010 -- 15.1% of the population, according to the Census Bureau. The number of people in poverty hit a level never seen in the 52 years records have been kept. That's the net effect of 14 million people looking for work, and of median income continuing to nosedive.

For the poor, this is not an economic correction or downturn. It's devastation. The economic trouble is much grimmer for those who were bad off to begin with.

While top earners have seen their incomes decline by about 1.5% since 1999, the bottom 10th have seen a 12% drop. Now, more than one in every five American children lives in poverty. For black and Hispanic children, the numbers approach 40%.

It has become politically unfashionable to lament what's happening to the poor in this country. Many in the GOP have embraced the cruel mantra that the poor got that way on purpose and are just too lazy to do any better.

Not one of the party's presidential hopefuls even mentioned the poor during this week's Tea Party debate. And in a shocking revelation of the party's growing callousness, several audience members called "Yeah!" when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if a sick patient with no health insurance should be left to die.

Democrats have been cowed by the right's rhetoric and have stopped discussing poverty openly. During President Barack Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress last week, he mentioned the poor exactly zero times and induced yawns across both aisles when he invoked themes of the nation's responsibility to help those who are needy.

That's tragic. Both parties have acquiesced to the fiction that a singular focus on the welfare of middle- and upper-class Americans will revive the economy for everyone. They ignore statistics that show the wealth gap growing even in good times, and stretching to epic proportions in bad times.

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