{"id":178,"date":"2009-03-26T15:34:44","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T23:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/?p=178"},"modified":"2009-03-26T15:34:44","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T23:34:44","slug":"obama-on-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Obama On Board?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bob

Bob Ballard<\/p><\/div>\n

At his March 24 press conference, President Obama talked about the homeless epidemic in this country. He said that he is “heartbroken that any child in America is homeless” and that “the most important thing that I can do … is to make sure their parents have a job.” He also said “that change in attitudes that I want to see here in Washington and all across the country is a belief that it is not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads.”<\/p>\n

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Our mission is to shift public perceptions of homeless people, so we are glad that the President is interested in this as well. Although he seems to have some genuine compassion for people, President Obama is working within the confines of an economic machine that clearly doesn’t work. As he mentions, there were too many homeless people on our streets before<\/strong> the recent economic collapse. A job is a good thing, but will not provide any long term benefit to people.<\/p>\n

There is no solution to homelessness inside the economic engine that we have had for the last 150 years. The system is not intended to serve human beings. Our consumer culture is designed to produce and consume goods and services as fast as possible and its beneficiaries are those that receive the profits. The rest of us exist simply to turn a cog in this economic engine, convinced by the relentless media machine that we will someday join the economic elite.\u00a0 Although it may been partly true in the past that many people shared in at least some the profits, it is no longer. Wealth distribution in this country is highly inequitable and will increase so long as we continue to hold on to a failed system.<\/p>\n

The people who are homeless are the refuse, another waste product like the environmental damage that this system has produced. And homelessness is not the only damage to human beings. Increasing alcohol and drug abuse, psychological problems, deadly diseases and more are devastating human beings.<\/p>\n

I don’t have the answer, but I know that a new paradigm for human beings is coming into the world. It is based on the inherent value of human beings and a rising global consciousness of who we truly are: powerful, eternal life force that is intimately connected with each other and all of life. The new paradigm has been written and talked about by many people, some of whom go back centuries.<\/p>\n

When we finally see that no one can truly succeed unless we all succeed and that we are not defined by what we have but by who we are, many “problems” will cease to exist as the old pardigm fades into history. That day is coming, we are creating it and we are living into it. You are welcome to join us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At his March 24 press conference, President Obama talked about the homeless epidemic in this country. He said that he is “heartbroken that any child in America is homeless” and that “the most important thing that I can do … is to make sure their parents have a job.” He also said “that change in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartsoffireproject.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}