The question raised here locally whether there should be a designated “homeless park” in Bakersfield addresses some of the desperate problems being faced by cities across America. Years ago I was writing about the potential crisis facing America when it became obvious welfare and prisons were “growth industries,” and not since the Great Depression has the prospect of soup kitchens and bread lines become such a specter rising from the past, even the despicable Caesar Bush finally acknowledging the country is facing economic uncertainties. Of course, he will find no fault with him and his administration for such “uncertainties.” As with university professors, God is on his throne and all is well upon the earth when you are Caesar or one of his dogs with their snouts in the public tax trough and don’t have to be personally accountable to anyone for your rice bowl.

Kern County is being hard-pressed facing expanding our county prison “infill” beds in order to alleviate overall state prison overcrowding. But the fact that California is further stressed because of the multitudes of illegal aliens receives little media attention, especially here in California, and the federal government as with California’s legislature is more interested in promoting slave labor than caring for the needs and safety of legitimate American citizens.

For those of you who have watched the History Channel presentation “Little Ice Age: Big Chill” it brings to mind Henry Thoreau’s thought on the subject of climate change, how slender is the thread of human life on earth and how easily it might be cut by just a slightly colder winter or slightly warmer summer. Though the cause or causes of the little ice age continue to be debated and the arguments over the causes of present climate change go on, no one is arguing the dramatic and potentially life-threatening impact of such change, no one argues the kinds of changes that have occurred in the past should they happen again with such intensity still hold the potential of wiping out entire nations, even being an E.L.E.

But it is patently obvious the nations of the world are not going to come to agreement and cooperate fully on eliminating greenhouse gases even should the human causes of these be proven beyond any doubt. There are far too many billions of people on this planet living in poverty demanding and consuming diminishing natural resources to entertain any Utopian notions of such cooperation on a global scale. And virtually nowhere in the world do we find the essential need of birth control among those unable to provide for the resulting children being made a national priority.

One example of the failure to teach and practice birth control here in America, if you have been following the reports of the homeless and the mentally ill forced onto the streets around America to make their own way best they can it’s enough to make you sick, and it isn’t difficult to believe the Devil is at work in this dreadful situation, and some would say among his servants are those corporations profiting from the causes of so much misery and suffering. This isn’t to say much of the suffering is not of human causes such as the failure to practice birth control among those that have babies with no thought to their future; far too much of it is. But in my opinion corporate greed with the cooperation of betraying politicians have created Plantation America which is devoted to promoting a slave population without the benefit of the old plantations where the slaves were properly cared for since they were considered “property” of value. This was the reason Henry expressed his opinion it was better to suffer under a southern overseer than a northern one, the plight of workers in the factory workhouses of the north being pitiable in the extreme.

Now, thanks to our Federal Caesar illegal aliens take the jobs in which an excess of unskilled American workers might find work and increasingly even skilled workers cannot find employment, and the once golden goose that had promised the American Dream is on life support, one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Whether you believe there is a Devil or not, even as a metaphor it seems appropriate to describe world conditions in the words of Scripture the Devil “as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” And the Devil or not with so many doomsday scenarios abounding it isn’t any wonder people are searching for something to give them hope. But I hear nothing from the present contenders for the Oval Office or elsewhere to offer us hope; I hear none of them offering specific and pragmatic answers to the questions arising from the desperate circumstances America is facing.