Posted on 04/10/2008 8:20:13 PM PDT by B-Chan
Taxmares in Bushvilles
UrbanSurvival is unfortunately a nonfiction writing operation. But, every once in a while an idea slams me across the right hemisphere that brings tears to my eyes because of what a fine nonfictional fiction plot it would make.
[...]
The plot of this [prospective novel] takes place in the many Bushvilles which I asked people to send in notes on in yesterday's column. These emergent new features of "Shruburbia" are popping up all over the country, although they seem to weight toward the Midwest and West. The author of Taxmares can set it almost anywhere in the country, judging by our reports of Bushvilles:
"Hey Hey George, ***** from Cleveland State University. Yep got one permanent one here, and some one or two tents popping up next to the highway off/on ramps. What used to be a thriving night district, "The Flats" now houses a small tent city underneath a major highway. My next year change will take some more planning, No Orchestral jobs yet for me, but my farming gene is kicking back in and a move back to Kansas or Arkansas is in the making."Even the time monks at HPH report that their trips to the server farm near Olympia Washington have yielded glimpse into the more or less officially denied impromptu self-organizing collectives of Newly Poor: "---
Howdy George, Ontario CA has a bushville created by the City of Ontario, CA due tot the massive foreclosures there.
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George, You asked for examples of Bushville's. You need not travel any further than your local county or state park. Gathered there are the people who live in the "low tent district". They are easily recognizable. Their clothing is hung on a clothesline between two trees. Their children, if they have any with them, are not "normal", because they don't smile much. Their "storage facility" is a few boxes under a tarp. Their vehicle, if they have one, is generally an older one or a very rusty pickup truck. It doubles as a storage facility, since it doesn't move much. Their daily activity is searching out the aluminum cans or anything else of value in dumpsters , to provide meal(s) for the family. Their favorite "hang out" is the local "daily" work agency. Most stay all day, just hoping for something to get them through that day. I have met: a chef (who just loves MRE's) [yeah right], two people with Muscular Dystrophy (she was pregnant), an Electrical Engineer who lost his house and was trying to get to a new "job site" and many, many, many, many, others in the same situation. These people will not beg. When approached, they will not "readily" talk about their situation. Most of these people are very proud and have the same "positive outlook" about life. They believe their situation is "only temporary". However; when they approach a local church, the question asked first is: "Are you a member of our congregation"? "What denomination are you"? The local "relief" organizations want to know an address to visit. When they find out it's a tent, they say "come back when you have a residence". In the seven states that I traveled through, the "tents", if they had one, were everywhere. This summer should bring out the need for more "parks".
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Portland Oregon has had an officially sanctioned Bushville near the Airport for several years now
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We live in the Golden Triangle( Beaumont, Port Arthur, Bridge City) Texas. What we notice are the number of travel trailers being set up in every nook and cranny. We are not tourist area, every travel trailer park is full from here to Texarkana. Monday we noticed a large slab than was under a building that burnt down basically a parking lot, no trees) 2 trailers were on it, Tuesday there were 9. It will hold about 12 trailers, I suspect it will be full today. I think people are living in travel trailers in LARGE numbers. I have been living in this area for 50 years and have never seen anything like this.
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Cleveland, Ohio had a tent city that was south of downtown around Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) in 2007. I heard that the city moved the residents, but they are no longer visible to the persons going to the stadium.
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Hi George, I've lived in Hawaii (on Oahu) for 20 years now and yes, we have a growing community of Bushvilles here. Our homeless population continues to grow, so much so, that its no longer a good idea to take the kid to any of the beaches on the west coast. Years back, those were pristine undeveloped beaches that I used to love going to. MSNBC did a story on it. [...] Lately, the Dept. of Transportation has been tearing down tent cities in Honolulu to keep them out of the eye of tourists and sending in other corpgov thugs to take their dogs.[...] All is not well in paradise.
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George This may seem obvious, but I was in New Orleans last month and the size of the Bushville tent city under the I-10 was truly substantial. I would figure hundreds of tents spread along a long stretch.
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RV park for homeless planned Austin City Council to vote on lease this week.
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...here in Joplin Missouri, too.
"3/three tent cities here in oly/lacey. One is near my house...about 5 miles away with probably 20 families. Others, non sanctioned homeless camps in the woods are being raided by police these days. Have seen it twice here in last month. "One reason why there are likely so many Bushvilles in the southern half of the country is winters. It was pretty common during the last Depression for hobos and others down and out on their luck, to hop the next possible southbound freight and head for warmer climates. If you're going to squat a home, best do it where utility bills are low.
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Having a fair title (which is something every publishing house gets worked up about) and several settings including a John Steinbeck-like Grapes of Wrath mobility, we next have to look for some of the main points to the plot.
The time monks have found these in abundance in the form of what can perhaps best be described as punitive 1099'ing - a topic which is cropping up on web forums all over the place.
The basics mechanics of it go something like this - and whether it is applied to a credit card balance or to a house matters little:
* A person gets into a big debt.The idea being that if you have a credit card debt, say, and you roll up $30,000 worth of expenses, and are forgiven $20,000 of it, then you should pay tax on the $20,000 of lifestyle accumulated tax-free.
* They find that for whatever reason they can not make their payments.
* They default on the debt.
* The lender tacks whatever they feel like on top of the debt as "cost of collection" and then "forgives" some portion of the debt.
* The forgiven portion is then 1099'ed to the taxpayer.
* The business bundles up all the "forgivenesses" and writes it all off as a business expense against their taxes (bad debt account).
* IRS (and other tax authorities) are then flooded with 1099's of people who can't really afford to pay.
* The consumer then has a choice to make: File taxes, but admit to a 1099'ed amount that is absurd and so large as to be unpayable, OR don't file and skip out.
Or, in the case of a house, you go through a home equity loan and do a 125% LTV (loan to value) and pull out perhaps $100,000 of cash -- well, Uncle wants his bite.
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The problem is that the very people who are getting these kind of 1099's - what we could call 10-90-ninemares - are the very people who have lived beyond their means for so long that they have nothing left to pay their tax bills.
Which leads to an interesting moral dilemma - always good grist for a novel: Who's the bad guy here? Is it the mean tax authority who wants to make sure than no income goes unpunished? Is it the house flipping couple who were guilty of taking the easy money and trying to 'get rich quick' at the expense of others? Is it the Congress and the White House (and let's not forget Mr. Bubbles, Alan Greenspan, who during his tenure at the "Fed" helm was caught many times extolling the virtues of historical records being set in home ownership without considering the consequences of such excess)? Is it the homebuilders who over-built demand based on historical means? Is it the PowersThatBe who behind the scenes are happily making 6% every year by renting America its own money through the mechanism of that Critter from Jekyll Island? Is it the colluding real estate agents, appraisers, house-flippers, and growth at all costs mortgage bankers?
Or, is it the enablers on Wall Street who bundled up all the bad paper and sold it from New York to Shanghai under the guise of it being a collateralized debt obligation which could be traded like a bond, until of course, it couldn't...
It may be a little early to see the dénouement clearly. If my sense of it is correct, everyone has a little portion of the blame to bear.
But, you get the idea: There's a horror novel unfolding before the common-sense portion of the population (both of us and that one other reader overs there) which is really worthy of the finest horror writer we can find. Otherwise, no one would believe it.
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I keep coming back to titles. Perhaps Taxmares in Bushvilles is not quite right. A few other titles come to mind: Taxjoe, Taxcatcher, The Flipperknockers, Wealth Sematary...
OK, not as flashy as a kid running around starting fires or werewolves, but in its own Rod Serling-esque "To Serve Man" kind of way, this plot has the ring of believability and in the end, who needs mean kids, wolves, or Kanamits when we have an abdicated Congress, a Strong Man Ruler, and circularly referenced economy?
Certainly not us, the good citizens of Bushville.
Links and more are in the original artucle.
I haven’t seen any. However, I recall tent towns during the reign of Jimmuh the Anti-semite.
The writing is poor, but I think I get it - - some people in the greatest, most prosperous nation in history have failed to take advantage of free government education and other government handouts galore, and allowed themselves to become losers and lazy wards of the socialist Democrat welfare state. It’s all Bush’s fault.
Like I said, the writing is poor but I believe that’s the author’s “point”.
Of course the down on their luck, hobos and panhandlers are always the hardest hit by these bubbles. I imagine they had trouble making those mortgage payments on the big top tents when the adjustable rates went up.
Indeed. In a long winded rant he is basically saying the liberal welfare state has failed. Well duh.
To say the least, I am highly skeptical that there are large amounts of people who went from living in a house with a mortgage to tent cities.
The problem with BDS is that people will now believe anything that can remotely be blamed on Bush. Katrina proved that. So it’s entirely possible that this could become the next media meme.
During the Great Depression they called any tent city or other slapped-together housing “Hoovervilles” ... now they are trying to hang W with “Bushvilles”.
Pretty lame. There’s officially-sanctioned “tent cities” here in Seattle. They’ve been there since the, uh... mid 90’s.
That would make it a *Crintonville - eh?
Hoover? Hoover!? The only thing that sucked recently was Monica,and she was a democrat
Yep this is pure fantasy. I’m in Ohio and we are supposed to be one of the worst with foreclocures and I haven’t seen anyone in tents yet.
And you won’t find them in tents when they can live in their Lexus’ and sip Perrier from a brown paper bag...
It seems to me that the best solution for these poor, needy folks is to migrate. Yes, make a migration to a more caring area, one which is more in tune with their idea of what a country should be like. They should migrate to Cuba; they could replace the people who risk their lives swimming or boating out of that country.
Give’em jobs building the fence.
I haven’t seen Tent Cities. I have seen one or two tents under overpasses on the highway. There are to many burnt and gutted out slum lands in Fort Worth and Dallas for people to resort to tents. Just go look at Como in Fort Worth off of Horne St. or North Side off of Carver. “Houses” that you could literally buy from the slumlord for $2,500 - $5,000. These are just good enough to qualify on the low end of Section 8 or can at least get people who can pay small amounts of rent.
Well, we have a hobo town down by the Mississippi here, but it is mainly filled with gay men and has been there for over ten years.
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