The problem with New York City and this country

I tell you something boys and girls, it's the little guy that gets fucked in this city more and more. New York is my town, I grew up here and it's all I know, but more and more this city is changing and I'm not liking the changes. There used to be a diner near me, they made some of the best burgers and egg creams I ever had and I'm a connoisseur. This diner had been in the area for 25 years, when no one wanted to even come to this neighborhood because it was basically abandoned. This man worked his ass off building his business, his clientele. People came to count on this place to always be open for their morning breakfasts, lunches, dinners. The owner was a nice Greek guy that always had a smile for you when you came in. Now some rich bastard bought the building and bam, just like that this guy is out on the street. New York used to be a city of neighborhoods, each having it's own flavor and vibe and that's still true in parts of Brooklyn and the other boroughs. But in Manhattan that's vibe is long gone. If you walk through Soho now it's all glitzy stores, with very few small businesses. You know why? because the rents have gone up so much that small businesses can't survive. How many Banks do we need? or sephora's or Starbuck's with their overpriced coffee that tastes like crap and other such places. I blame mayor Bloomberg for most of this and also Giuliani to some extent, the rampant building going on in Manhattan especially has gone unchecked. How many new condo developments do we need and who the fuck is buying all these boxes for 800,000 a pop? Certainly not the middle class or lower middle class who are getting shit on left and right by this government. Affordable housing units are vanishing at record levels as Bloomberg allows landlords to exit programs such as Mitchell llama and other affordable housing programs.I am almost at the point myself of being forced out of my apartment or "priced out" as the saying goes. Wages don't keep up with rent and other bills, then what do you get? You get screwed my friend that's what. How long are we supposed to just take it? It seems to me that the gap is widening so far under Bush between the haves and have nots that sooner or later we are going to be another Russia, where there is no middle class just rich and poor. It looks like I'm going to be coming out on the losing side unless I can get a writing job, going back to school is costing me $15,000 a semester.So I'll be lucky if I have any credit once I get out. If there's no jobs waiting for me then it's bankruptcy city, Ive been there before but don't want to be there again. The point I'm trying to make here is, when is enough enough? I think we need a revolution in this country, it might not be an armed one but there must be one of ideas. Of finally saying enough is enough of the status quo, both democrats and republicans have real flaws and the independents aren't much better. Can't we just have a fucking honest president for once? I know people like to bad mouth Clinton but I'll tell you something, I had no problem finding work when he was in office. When Clinton was in office the New York Times sunday help wanted section averaged over 30 pages of jobs and sometimes more a week. Under Bush the same section averages ten pages on a good week, it's usually less. In a city of over 8 million that's not good. I've been to job interviews when I can get one, where the person hiring has told me he got 400 resumes for one job! That shit scares me because it's telling me I basically have no chance. If a man can't make a decent wage and care for his family or his girlfriend or boyfriend then that man starts to die inside, slowly at first then more and more as his pride gets eaten away. A man needs his pride, it keeps him going through the hard times. I guess we all die a little each day, who needs to speed up the process? I hope things change, I hope once Bush leaves office a democrat can come in and clean up the mess again like Clinton had to do after Reagan and Bush the first screwed things up. I don't get why anyone votes republican, there track record stinks and what do these people really stand for? they are zealots for the most part both religious and ideological, they are dangerous, especially a person like Bush who thinks that God is speaking through him. If he really was, he would have helped those poor people in New Orleans, we say we have the greatest military in the world but for some reason we can't drop pallets of food and water to our own people?! Or, maybe we could have but they were poor and black and probably didn't vote for Bush anyway so what did he care. He had to clear some brush on his farm didn't he? I am sorry for this rant, but sometimes this shit just builds up in your psyche and it has to be released, it's like that scene from the doors where Jim Morrison almost has his nervous breakdown, he sees the war in Vietnam on TV, he's under indictment by the criminal courts, the world seems to be spiraling out of control and he says "I think i'm having a nervous breakdown" I guess that's how I feel in a way, with the Iraq war, global warming, polar bears drowning because there's no ice left, animal cruelty, high gas prices,high rents, low pay, the immigration debate, well hey that's not a problem for me I don't care either way and why is this an issue now? people have been jumping over that border for the past fifty to 100 years, and wasn't Texas once Mexico's land? As well as most of California? Oh I forgot, we stole that from them too, just like we murdered and subjugated the American Indians in this country. We have a lot of blood on our hands, I wonder if you add up all the innocent civilians we killed even in just the past 100 years in the wars we have fought and sometimes started. How many people have we killed? it must be in the tens of millions. That has an exponential effect, all those people never got to finish out their lives, maybe one of those people might have found a cure for cancer or built some amazing machine, but we will never know, what about all the kids they might have had and so on and so on. I don't know how this rant turned from New York City to this but hey I'm going with it. When a writer gets this feeling he or she often doesn't want to stop, and why should they, writing isn't easy you know and usually is fueled by passion. I guess I'm an angry American and an angry New Yorker too, if anyone is reading this I hope I haven't bored you. What I can say is read your history because we always end up repeating it, to not know your history is to not know your past and that is a bad thing. I hope things will get better in my city but to be honest, I think it's the end of an era, this isn't the city I once new, it's a glitzed up version of it's former self. Part of the city's allure for me was that it wasn't perfect, it still isn't but I liked it when it was a little more dangerous and a little less clean. I liked my old neighborhood stores where the people knew you and you were happy to give them your money because you knew it was going towards a life, a family and a dream. Not to some corporate entity that viewed you as a statistic on a sheet of paper. That's the difference I guess. I must say it's sad to see this happen to my city. Keep the faith people and let's hope the worm turns someday.