Monday, February 28, 2011

Recession Increasing Crimes

By most reliable statistics post the 1960's even, it does appear that the violent property and personal crime rates throughout most of the U.S. metro cities is on the rise, and ten fold what they were back in the day from this boomer's point of view and personal experiences. Especially in the last five years post my exile from the State of Arizona after the National Guard was called out due to public demand back in 2006 when the housing crisis and mortgage mess was in full swing.

Recently, I had another experience with our out of control rates of criminal activity by the younger generation especially, it appears.

A generation raised on computer and video games, and also expensive calculators and computers for their research and learning in our "New Age" schools which are predominately focused on teaching children how to use these machines, rather than to think, reason or even read. Vocabulary lessons are pretty much gone in favor of the btw and lol shorthand of the computer generation.

I left Arizona, of course, almost five years ago after having experienced the criminal activity in the banking and foreclosure industry there, an industry highly supported by most of the legislature in one manner or another in order to, of course, fund their campaign war chests for their next election runs.

The banking and real estate market is a very lucrative one, and also one in which has progressively taken some rather unethical and immoral turns in the past thirty years since the 1970's in that tourism and retirement state after having foresaken long ago most of its historical industries in cotton, cattle, copper, climate (for the health impaired) and citrus.

I moved to the Midwest first but unfortunately the spring and summer crop seasons and crop dusting and humidity did not agree with this asthmatic.

I then moved to the South where I had family members living to somewhat assist my parents with their increasing difficulties due to their aging and health declines, and was there for one of the hurricanes and then progressively contracted a lung infection which got worse the longer I stayed.

During that time while staying at a nearby hotel after one of my mother's surgeries, I had the first of several automobile thefts, in which they appropriated some of my luggage, a quarter collection, and even a soup bowl I used for my Cup o' Noodles. Louisiana truly is hurting post all the devastation of the past five years in that particular state.

This taken in light of the break-in I had just prior to leaving Arizona when my car was broken into at one of the truck rental establishments near the freeway when I had to rent a truck overnight to move what I had left of my personal property and effects after having sold most of them in order to pay off debts which were "due" concerning my house and what occurred which led to the loss.

In that instance, the perpetrators tried to get a small cheap CD player I had in the car, and broke the panel attempting to remove it, and stole of course most of the few CDs I had in the car along with damaging it, although it is a 16 year old automobile at this point.

Then several weeks ago, another property crime once again.

After having been cited for a traffic violation in another area of the country in which I have attempted to live in order to get as well as can be expected considering my health issues as an asthmatic, I decided one snowy day to walk to a nearby store in order to purchase some cream for my coffee. I have also been politically targeted due to the positions I have taken on many issues facing this country in the border situation, health care and housing mess from a Constitutional perspective, which of course has created enemies in those who hold with their "illegal" views for the benefit of the few, at the cost of the many.

As I was walking past one of those portable lunch wagons along a major city street, a young man of about 25-28 blocked my route, grabbed my purse, and took off across an open field with it. A blur of a dark haired youth in a blue jacket is all I really can remember, it happened so fast.

With it, he got about $10.00 in cash, and all my personal identification for the most part. My social security card, my birth certificate, and even pictures of my children when they were mere babes. Of what I had left, most of what I held dear.

Of course, there are fees and charges involved with replacing even those documents which were stolen. And inside it also was about three years worth of work I had done as a graphic artist and designer on some of the photographs I had begun to edit during the time my health was up and down and during my parents health crisis and hospitalizations these past several years.

I was, of course, outraged and angry.

It wasn't the fact that there are not programs for those that need them in order to eat, as at least those programs have not been cut in food stamps and the civic organizations that provide food for the hungry.

In fact, I have had to avail myself of the services of some of those civic organizations after having lost most everything I owned and unable to work other than at my small art endeavor this past several years, and mostly living in weekly rentals due to the fact that I really do not have all those deposits nor a credit rating that will afford me to "permanently" relocate anywhere - and meet the legal definitions and guidelines for refugee status, although there are no benefits provided for American refugees of the border wars even after the Guard had been called out as my former home state truly and continues to be under invasion from those open and porous southern borders and the crime that has occurred there and increased in leaps and bounds post-Reagan and the widening of that interstate from Nogales to Flagstaff.

I just wonder, if those police had been instead of harassing Americans post the Patriot Act for their own self-serving ends, or facilitating and assisting in the rising costs of insurance in this country which now few can afford at all in most metro areas throughout the country, and instead patrolling neighborhoods as they did in the olden days, would the property and personal crime figures be as high as they are today?

Instead of incarcerating or citing low level DUIs without injury or property damage, seat belt violators, or those who have not at all committed any true measurable crime under the common law in which our Constitution is based?

Some of the laws which are clearly used by those public servants are merely exercises in harassment, rather than addressing the symptoms (such as with the border situation) rather than the problems themselves and curing those.

So for all those "personal responsibility" Republicans, and all those "bleeding heart" Democrats believing in "human" rights rather than the inalienable rights of native born or naturalized Americans, it isn't the victims who are responsible for their circumstances, or their increasing poverty, especially those in the boomer generation.

A country without a conscience, as has occurred progressively post 9-11, is mostly to blame.

And that, once again, is fact.