When did New York City start looking like a third world country?

I’m not trying to steal Joe Biden’s thunder when he landed at LaGuardia and saw frozen planes, unplowed runways and shortage of underpaid personnel. Of course, Governor Cuomo and newly elected Mayor Bill deBlasio jumped to get the money to redo the 75-year-old LaGuardia, including some minimum wages. But I’m not talking about architecture or wages. I’m talking about people decaying before my eyes as I walk down Broadway on a 20-degree, gray, Saturday morning; decaying along with the unpicked-up mounds of frozen snow and lingering garbage.

Some are slouched in doorways, some against a wall, some just walking alone, talking, singing incoherently to themselves; some shivering, asking you humbly for some change. You’ve already given your daily pocket of change away, so you guiltily say no. You wish you had a pocket and wallet that would fill up as fast as you depleted it. But in a way, you do. That would be the Citibank on Broadway and 96^th Street as a repository.

I used to go to the branch closer to home, which was on 111^th Street and Broadway, but that burned down several weeks ago. They have given up restoring it. The word is out the landlord wouldn’t renew the lease without getting an extravagant increase. When Citibank refused, the building and the restaurant next to it magically caught fire. The word is out that the landlord allegedly set the fire. His company stands now to receive the insurance money. Unless Citi can prove it was torched.

I remember the firemen blocking up Broadway all night and the next day and days after to simply clean it up for people and traffic to pass. Now, it’s been officially announced as closed, so I have to go downtown to the 96^th Street and Broadway branch that’s farther away. By the way, this stretch of Broadway has had nine pedestrian deaths due to speeding cars and deficient traffic lights. Is has the worst record for traffic deaths than any other street in New York City. So you have to walk there hyper-carefully, not to be knocked into eternity any minute. I stand in that bank’s ATM space to warm up as the money machines hum. After a lifetime of working, saving, raising and having a family, I feel like I’m failing my fellow man.

But getting back to “those people,” the lost souls I help this day as I pass; sometimes I duck away the next day or days when they feel like they’re on my retired person’s payroll. It’s not a good feeling to have to turn your back. And I wish I could call Biden and his slick sidekick Obama to stop stamping out food stamps, or removing monies for shelters, and for the economy being manipulated to the detriment of the poor and disenfranchised and in favor of the rich and corrupt. This has been a particularly killer winter, and has not spared us a day of its store of cold, ice, rain, snow, or everything at once like an ice bomb.

I don’t even know if I could be a Joe Biden and just get angry, turn my back, and not have those lost faces in my face. There is one young white woman outside the bank’s 96^th Street branch, looking right through me, whispering “some change?” She could be anyone of us. Crossing the street, I see a young black woman sitting on the cold sidewalk with her back against a closed storefront, not even bothering to ask.

This is in sharp contrast to the lavish Sochi Olympics at the end of their opening ceremonies Friday, during which President Putin lavishly minimized the plight of the post-Stalinist era in a ballet of Russian history. In fact, this is when much of the population simply drank itself into oblivion. It reminds me of that black man I see, pushing a rattling supermarket basket, asking me, “Please, man, could I have a dollar for food? I don’t want to eat out of garbage cans tonight. My stomach hurts.” I quickly reach in my pocket and pull out a dollar and give it to him.

When I get home I turn on the TV, and change channels to look at Obama’s articulate face making excuses for not attending the Olympics, spewing more clichés on human rights as the reason and threatening sanctions if those rights are not upheld. This, just as food stamps have been cut again in the farm bill, and Jamie Dimon has been awarded another huge bonus from JPMorganChase for breaking more banking rules. My stomach literally turns.

I see the same names again flashing from commercials for Corporate Amazon, Facebook, Google, MacDonald, Audis, etc., and I see the same stories on RT.com seeping in regarding Edward Snowden’s “crimes,” despite the fact that he was just informing us of the sins of the NSA. I start thinking, when did America start looking like a third world country?

And I think it’s been a “long-time coming” and it will be a “long-time” leaving.” Perhaps if we went to a fiat currency pegged to our military might (the resource that seems most abundant in our impoverished economy since Bush started the War on Terror). Maybe if we the people could drum up the indignant tone of Biden, surprised, shocked at all we could have done by breaking his puppet silence: build a decent airport, infrastructure, economy, or demand troop withdrawal and peace at last.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.