Cross-posted from www.Progressive-Independence.org
I was perusing a certain kind of ideological web site when I came upon the following article by Nicole Colson.
ONE AFTER another over the last month, the reports of terrible incidents of violence kept coming:
— A Vietnamese immigrant in Binghamton, N.Y., increasingly paranoid about police and upset after losing his job, kills 13 people at a center for immigrants before committing suicide.
— An Alabama man who had struggled to keep a job kills 10 people in a shooting spree before committing suicide.
— A Pittsburgh man, recently unemployed and afraid that the government would ban guns, opens fire on police responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three.
These are just some of the recent eruptions of violence to make the headlines in U.S. newspapers. In the 30-day period between March 10 and April 10, there were at least nine multiple shootings across the U.S., claiming the lives of at least 58 people.
The individual motives and stories differ widely, but there’s a common thread among these incidents–the worsening economic crisis is becoming a factor in pushing some people who are already on the edge over it.
It seems nearly everyone is concerned with the ever-shrinking middle class, but almost no one is willing to discuss the social class those middlings are being tossed into: the POOR. The platform, speaking for the poor, that John Edwards ran on during last year’s presidential election primaries resulted in his marginalization and eventual banishment from the public discourse as the elite weeded out those candidates who dare point out the disease of poverty. But just because the messengers were silenced does not mean the larger problem went away; it continues to fester, with disastrous social consequences.
Another such alleged “bad apple” is now on trial in Portland, Oregon. This time the trial is for theft. 
