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..40,000 families are applying for just 350 affordable-housing vouchers. Church-operated pantries are running out of food. Crisis calls have more than doubled in the city of Antioch, where the Family Stress Center occupies the site of a former bank.
...forcing thousands of previously middle-income workers to seek social services, overwhelming local agencies, clinics and nonprofits. Each month 16,000 people, including many who were making $60,000 to $100,000 annually just a few years ago, fill four county offices requesting financial, medical or food assistance.
“Unless we do things differently, not only will we continue to be on life support, but the power to the machine is going to die,” said county Supervisor Federal Glover, who represents Antioch and the cities of Pittsburg and Oakley about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of San Francisco.Contra Costa, an East Bay suburban region of more than 1 million, turned thousands of farmland acres into housing in the past two decades, becoming an affordable alternative to San Francisco. Now, the area is being hit by a double whammy, as rising unemployment increases demand for social services, while plunging home values shrink tax revenue and squeeze agency budgets.
County officials made $90 million in cuts during the current fiscal year, and plan to reduce another $56 million, out of a $1.2 billion general-fund budget, in the coming year. County administrator David Twa said he doesn’t expect to see a “gradual recovery” in property taxes until 2012 or 2013.
Safety Net
The social safety net is being stretched “all over the country,” said Jacqueline Byers, research director for the National Association of Counties in Washington. “The formerly middle class who lost jobs, homes, or both suddenly are requesting assistance for the first time.” Nationwide, demand for food stamps, one of the first benefits that new applicants for services qualify for, has mushroomed since the recession began in December 2007. About 31.1 million people received food stamps in November....
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The Third World is not a condition but a civilization.
Bringing tens of millions of thirdworlders into The West will not result in them "rising above" the third world because they are the third world in thought and blood.
It's a genetic construct, not a social one.
At one time California was majority White. Now it is only about 35% White, if that. And as the Whites have fled so have the standards of living.
There are those who still jump and down and insist "equality" must be achieved. But the truth is that there is no such thing as equality on any level or in any circumstance or form what-so-ever.
Nature has made it so.
Trying to help non-Whites rise to the level of White civilization is unnatural. It's like insisting all creatures are equal and attempting to prove it by trying to teach a garden slug how to fly by throwing it off a cliff.
Nature is the gravity of social engineers. They can fight against it (and even deny it's existence) till they're blue in the face, yet nature always prevails in the end....
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