Coast-to-coast across the USA tent city shanty-towns reminiscent of 1930s Hoovervilles are springing up everywhere as the recession’s bite deepens. While W sits in his comfy suburban house in Dallas, makes speeches and flies down to the ranch in Crawford, safely inside a Secret Service bubble for 10 more years, the thousands who were literally one paycheque away from the street are finding themselves in a place they never thought they be in their lives. Decent hard working folks who lost both household jobs (remember when Dubya congratulated the woman at a rally working three jobs to hang on to her home?), are now dealing with life as homeless people.

The inside-the-beltway media and political class cluelessly chatter about Dick Cheney as if he and Karl Rove are still significant players. Were you worried that President Obama was not taking the economy seriously enough when he used gallows humour (my team jokes amongst themselves that we thought Iraq qould be our biggest challenge…) laughing at himself during recession talk? S there not 10 minutes free for him to fill out an NCAA tournament brackets or appear on the Tonight Show? He himself joked that there is never a free moment in that office, walking across a 700 yard field required a team to follow him including a rolling defribulator?

Under freeway bridges, on river banks, exposed to elements, living from moment-to-moment, praying they remain healthy… there is nothing trivial about the depth of this crisis. Homeless and abuse shelters are filled to over-capacity. Soup kitchens and food banks in hardest-hit rustbelt areas are unable to meet the bursting demand. Millions are un- or under-employed and unable to find work. Imagine the emotional pain of once being an executive earning $70,000 a year now working as a $12 an hour school janitor, wondering how long before you’re on the street or have exhausted every penny of your retirement savings to make ends meet.

Employers, now having the leverage to threaten an already terrified workforce with dismissal if they don’t bow to the corporation and new labour rules, are using the opportunity change work rules and compensation such as going a week a month without pay to save your job. The work-life balance gains: flex-time, telecommuting and vacations folks got used to are gone, replaced now with even more stress and fear of being under or uninsured in the event of a serious illness.

Those who were unlucky or did not make it through bankruptcy and foreclosure took their own lives (suicide rates are up double digit percentages in many major cities). The homeless sit with their few remaining possessions in cardboard boxes living out f their car or in tents learning basic survival skills on the mean streets of America’s cities. Sitting side-by-side with junkies, dealers and drunks in skid row and being themselves subjected to crimes.

Welcome to Bushville and remember the guy in the office 67 days did not create the mess or start the fire. In interview after interview the same refrain is repeated over and over again, “I never thought I’d leave to see this in America.”

Me neither.