The last time I went to visit them, I got shot at as we were walking to the grocery store.  I don't go there anymore.  The best we can do is to talk on the phone.

These kids live in a colonia of about 5,000 people crammed into maybe a 20-acre square on the east side of the city.  Many of the kids who live there have only two or three sets of clothes.  A lot of them have skin rashes and other health problems due to their poor nutrition -- a lot of them get maybe two or three small portions of meat a month.  Protein is a valuable commodity, as are fresh fruits and vegetables. Their mothers have to fill their bellies with flour tortillas, rice, and beans.

It keeps them from starving.

And forget about hygene.  When you're that poor, you just don't have time to think about it very much.  Besides, you don't want to bathe very often in the winter anyway because there isn't any hot water.  Hell, you're lucky if there's any heat in your apartment -- although it wouldn't matter much if there was, because the house leaks air like a sieve.  Any gas you have (you have to buy it in tanks) you have to save for cooking.

But it wouldn't help if you could bathe all the time anyway because (A) the water is polluted, and (B), so is everything else.

Most of the adults there can read most of the newspaper, and whenever someone gets one, it's well taken care of, because it gets passed around a lot.  Surprisingly, a lot of folks have televisions, and most of them work.  And maybe one in four families have access to a car of some sort that should have been in the junk yard years ago, but somehow they manage to keep it going.

It's a very tight-nit community.  There are the usual public soap operas that can be witnessed in any group of people that size, but people try to get along.  They know that they have to help each other, otherwise they'll all starve.

These are very good people who are victimized by a crime wave that we Americans cannot imagine, and by an economic system dominated by the United States that exploits them as if they were cattle or slaves.

So as we're worried about how big a health care package we can get, if we find that we're dissatisfied with the results, you can think about those people just a stone's throw to the south of us, who are cold, and hungry, and hoping they don't get hurt.

Because if they do, they will be doomed to utter misery and begging in the streets with the children for the rest of their lives.

To them, I'm the richest bastard in the world, and I know I'm damned lucky.

OP looks like a propaganda point from Faux News. Where were you over the past 30 years when our rights, programs for middle class, workplace safety, were being diluted, taken away, plundered?

There has been a 30 year war against the people of the United States by right wing corporate thugs, including the "sainted" devil, Reagan, GHW "CIA" Bush, DMC corporatist Clinton, and the rotten punks of the Dumbya administration. What makes you think that Obama can fix everything they broke in less than a year?

If you make an effort, you  will see many, many good things he's done already, starting with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and then averting a global economic meltdown. How about the $2 billion for broadband announced today? Going to the Copenhagen climate summit?

The health insurance legislation going through Congress right now is more than has been done in 60 years. There are good things and bad things in it. I'd rather see Medicare for all and banning for-profit insurance companies from receiving any federal money. I'd like to see fewer restrictions for women's health care. But in case you haven't noticed, the Republicans have filibustered or tried to add poison pills to every bill the Democrats have been working on in the current session. That's hundreds of filibusters--continual obstruction. 

We may not get everything we want, but we do need a bill to pass and get signed. Social Security and Medicare are ongoing projects, having been refined many times over the years. Health insurance reform will be refined too, but only if your voice is heard in Congress. Tell your representatives and senators what you want in the bill. Phone, send letters [snail mail letters are noticed more than cookie-cutter emails], emails, make yourself heard. Then do it again.

Stop complaining and act!