Do the math. $24 billion spent over 5 years is almost $5 billion per year. Divide that by the homeless population of 188K and that's $27,500 per person per year. That's either $2,300 per month for rent or almost $600 per week for groceries.
But as that video showed, the bulk of the $24 billion goes to the administrative costs necessary to deliver a sandwich , an apple, a cookie and a bottle of water to the handful of homeless they can find when not sitting in Starbucks.
It's people farming. The bigger the crop (the homeless), the more farmers you need. That's why homelessness is a "growing" problem.
Pol Pot would be proud of Mike Fong. Cambodia is a case study of how a small militant extremist minority destroyed an entire country. Our job is to prevent that from happening to California and America.
I read that CalMatters story yesterday and was similarly shocked-but-not-shocked. That’s how the Democrats run things, they’re very disciplined and execute to their agenda. They’re also cowards-- a theme of mine since covid. Too cowardly to vote no so they absent themselves from the meeting or abstain.
In an interview about taxpayer-funded food for the homeless being discarded en masse, Kathryn Barger got "pissed off" at the idea of a fucking cookie being thrown out, and then laughed. Are these "people" actually demonically possessed human-like entities?
People get the government they vote for and are willing to tolerate. Not sure what will cause things to change on a state level. I know every individual has different life and family situations but the only short term solution I see is to locate to an area in the country that shares your value system, puts people into elected office based on that and those people govern in a manner consistent with the will of their constituents.
Democrats will continue to Democrat. Post-Roe and post-Dobbs, everything changed. Remember LBJ’s comments after CRA, “we’ll have the ni***rs voting for us for a hundred years?” Replace “n…” with “women” post-Roe/Dobbs and the statement remains accurate.
Nothing will stop the leftward acceleration of Ds as half the franchise became single-issue voters.
Well, if the GOP were smart enough to grasp that a woman’s choice is none of the business of government, and their own idiocy is sacrificing our future, this could end, but they’re not called the “Stupid Party” for no reason
Manufactured Unity is spot on. You could freelance as a headline writer alone.
"Things that are not debated and evaluated don't work."
Amen!
My own experience with programs that do not work was in foreign language training in the Army. The Army is great at skill acquisition--we take civilians and make them into Soldiers in 8-10 weeks .
'High-difficulty' skill maintenance (unless it is aviation) is another story.
Foreign language maintenance is basically worthless. Soldiers' language proficiency scores plummet after DLI (Defense Language Institute--arguably the best foreign language training in the world). Airmen and Sailors' scores actually improve, but the GI just gets dumber.
I thought about this deeply for about two decades. We created novel training approaches:
1. Simulated immersion. 12-hour school days-no English-meals & PT with instructors. HARD. We violently shoved 150 contact hours (regulatory minimum to proctor annual proficiency test early--needed a 'significant training event--150 hours' to meet this threshold. Usually accomplished in 8-10 week refresher courses.
This program worked famously and it was still going until COVID lockdowns.
2. LingFit. A mashup of Crossfit principles (short, intense bursts of exercise-called Workouts of the Day WODs). We did this in 2009, even had 'an app for that' when that was the lingo.
This program, I later learned, was similar to Khan's Academy. Short 10 minute classes online.
We ran 100s of Soldiers through our immersion, then kept them sharp with LingFit. I honestly thought we were going to change language training for the Army--maybe the DOD. We were onto something.
I was essentially running a tech startup in an Armory--so fun, possibly the most rewarding professional experience of my life. In the top 3 for sure.
How did the Army respond? The DOD? Crickets. All of our data was essentially dismissed.
How could a group of clowns in the ARMY NATIONAL GUARD know better than our experts at DLI?
This story is actually too long for this--but the point of throwing good money after bad, of never inspecting the outcomes of programs with any curiosity, must less honesty--is 100% par for the course.
We need to turn off the spigot. Starve them out. The only way these people will learn, actually probably most people, is from pain.
“…leaky, unaudited spending…” happens exactly because it’s supposed to happen. Leaky and unaudited are the two adjectives that make the entire Federal government grift possible. You can’t get kickbacks, fund the non-profits run by your spouse, brother, and children, or steer government contracts to your nephew who then pays you 10% without things being leaky and unaudited. That’s the main reason leaky and unaudited funding for Ukraine won’t go away. Combine the military industrial complex, the grift, and the worst in the world corruption of Ukraine, and you have the mother of all money laundering schemes.
Also, I am reminded of what one of my Navy buddies said to me about the pay scheme at the airline where we both worked. The company was changing the complex rules on how pilots get paid. I lamented that. He looked at me and said, “It doesn’t matter what rules or scheme they put in place, we’ll figure out a way around it, and work it to our advantage. It’s what Americans do.” He was absolutely correct. The holes in the new pay plan were discovered and leveraged quickly. The pilots with no scruples figured out how to turn 30 vacation days into working only 2 months a year (until the company caught on and changed that, too)The corollary is that it didn’t really matter what governance plan or scheme the founding fathers put into place, if those there are morally compromised who will stop at nothing to game the system for personal benefit. One of the founding fathers said our system was incompatible with anything other than a moral people. The CalMatters story proves his point.
Yes, but these are good Party members and will do whatever the Party says, comrade. You, on the other hand, are not a good Party member for criticizing them. I bet you are a vax-skeptic, too. The Party is always right, except on the rare occasion when it is wrong, then it is your fault for not submitting to it immediately. Right roader.
It’s seems that when Democrats run governments, they devolve into giant money laundering operations for Democrats and their cronies. At least when Republicans do the same thing they spread your money to both allies and adversaries alike!
I'm pretty sure Saddam Hussein's "parliament" actually had more instances of opposition to legislation than this. At least the man every now and then had *some* shame, looked at constant 100 percent votes and said, geez, ok guys, let's mix it up a *little* bit.
Passing thousands of bills every year impresses many voters. "Our legislators are getting a lot of work done." It impresses me too - as evidence that in the last session (and every session before that) they failed to properly address anything. A legislature that does things right one year shouldn't have anything to do the next. Going into the future, it should only occasionally have to address emergent situations/problems. A legislature's main focus should be the budget, but that usually gets short shrift, as everyone spends the session scrambling to pass their pet legislation, that is nearly all aimed at putting money in the pockets of their supporters.
Do the math. $24 billion spent over 5 years is almost $5 billion per year. Divide that by the homeless population of 188K and that's $27,500 per person per year. That's either $2,300 per month for rent or almost $600 per week for groceries.
But as that video showed, the bulk of the $24 billion goes to the administrative costs necessary to deliver a sandwich , an apple, a cookie and a bottle of water to the handful of homeless they can find when not sitting in Starbucks.
It's people farming. The bigger the crop (the homeless), the more farmers you need. That's why homelessness is a "growing" problem.
Pol Pot would be proud of Mike Fong. Cambodia is a case study of how a small militant extremist minority destroyed an entire country. Our job is to prevent that from happening to California and America.
Fong is a diverse AWFL DEI: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/awfl-dei-karen-affluent-white-female-liberal
I read that CalMatters story yesterday and was similarly shocked-but-not-shocked. That’s how the Democrats run things, they’re very disciplined and execute to their agenda. They’re also cowards-- a theme of mine since covid. Too cowardly to vote no so they absent themselves from the meeting or abstain.
Wait. Didn't the Federal government just spend 10+ trillion dollars above the average? Fer what?
Shut up, rural whitey.
We are definitely at the Late Stage of Empire loot the treasury mode, it’s time for more bread and circus to keep the plebs distracted.
In an interview about taxpayer-funded food for the homeless being discarded en masse, Kathryn Barger got "pissed off" at the idea of a fucking cookie being thrown out, and then laughed. Are these "people" actually demonically possessed human-like entities?
People get the government they vote for and are willing to tolerate. Not sure what will cause things to change on a state level. I know every individual has different life and family situations but the only short term solution I see is to locate to an area in the country that shares your value system, puts people into elected office based on that and those people govern in a manner consistent with the will of their constituents.
Democrats will continue to Democrat. Post-Roe and post-Dobbs, everything changed. Remember LBJ’s comments after CRA, “we’ll have the ni***rs voting for us for a hundred years?” Replace “n…” with “women” post-Roe/Dobbs and the statement remains accurate.
Nothing will stop the leftward acceleration of Ds as half the franchise became single-issue voters.
Well, if the GOP were smart enough to grasp that a woman’s choice is none of the business of government, and their own idiocy is sacrificing our future, this could end, but they’re not called the “Stupid Party” for no reason
Manufactured Unity is spot on. You could freelance as a headline writer alone.
"Things that are not debated and evaluated don't work."
Amen!
My own experience with programs that do not work was in foreign language training in the Army. The Army is great at skill acquisition--we take civilians and make them into Soldiers in 8-10 weeks .
'High-difficulty' skill maintenance (unless it is aviation) is another story.
Foreign language maintenance is basically worthless. Soldiers' language proficiency scores plummet after DLI (Defense Language Institute--arguably the best foreign language training in the world). Airmen and Sailors' scores actually improve, but the GI just gets dumber.
I thought about this deeply for about two decades. We created novel training approaches:
1. Simulated immersion. 12-hour school days-no English-meals & PT with instructors. HARD. We violently shoved 150 contact hours (regulatory minimum to proctor annual proficiency test early--needed a 'significant training event--150 hours' to meet this threshold. Usually accomplished in 8-10 week refresher courses.
This program worked famously and it was still going until COVID lockdowns.
2. LingFit. A mashup of Crossfit principles (short, intense bursts of exercise-called Workouts of the Day WODs). We did this in 2009, even had 'an app for that' when that was the lingo.
This program, I later learned, was similar to Khan's Academy. Short 10 minute classes online.
We ran 100s of Soldiers through our immersion, then kept them sharp with LingFit. I honestly thought we were going to change language training for the Army--maybe the DOD. We were onto something.
I was essentially running a tech startup in an Armory--so fun, possibly the most rewarding professional experience of my life. In the top 3 for sure.
How did the Army respond? The DOD? Crickets. All of our data was essentially dismissed.
How could a group of clowns in the ARMY NATIONAL GUARD know better than our experts at DLI?
This story is actually too long for this--but the point of throwing good money after bad, of never inspecting the outcomes of programs with any curiosity, must less honesty--is 100% par for the course.
We need to turn off the spigot. Starve them out. The only way these people will learn, actually probably most people, is from pain.
bsn
“…leaky, unaudited spending…” happens exactly because it’s supposed to happen. Leaky and unaudited are the two adjectives that make the entire Federal government grift possible. You can’t get kickbacks, fund the non-profits run by your spouse, brother, and children, or steer government contracts to your nephew who then pays you 10% without things being leaky and unaudited. That’s the main reason leaky and unaudited funding for Ukraine won’t go away. Combine the military industrial complex, the grift, and the worst in the world corruption of Ukraine, and you have the mother of all money laundering schemes.
Also, I am reminded of what one of my Navy buddies said to me about the pay scheme at the airline where we both worked. The company was changing the complex rules on how pilots get paid. I lamented that. He looked at me and said, “It doesn’t matter what rules or scheme they put in place, we’ll figure out a way around it, and work it to our advantage. It’s what Americans do.” He was absolutely correct. The holes in the new pay plan were discovered and leveraged quickly. The pilots with no scruples figured out how to turn 30 vacation days into working only 2 months a year (until the company caught on and changed that, too)The corollary is that it didn’t really matter what governance plan or scheme the founding fathers put into place, if those there are morally compromised who will stop at nothing to game the system for personal benefit. One of the founding fathers said our system was incompatible with anything other than a moral people. The CalMatters story proves his point.
Another great post, Chris.
Yes, but these are good Party members and will do whatever the Party says, comrade. You, on the other hand, are not a good Party member for criticizing them. I bet you are a vax-skeptic, too. The Party is always right, except on the rare occasion when it is wrong, then it is your fault for not submitting to it immediately. Right roader.
Danny Huckabee
It’s all so tiresome.
It’s seems that when Democrats run governments, they devolve into giant money laundering operations for Democrats and their cronies. At least when Republicans do the same thing they spread your money to both allies and adversaries alike!
Fong and who ever the other one sound like Obummer. Never worked a day in his (?) life.
I'm pretty sure Saddam Hussein's "parliament" actually had more instances of opposition to legislation than this. At least the man every now and then had *some* shame, looked at constant 100 percent votes and said, geez, ok guys, let's mix it up a *little* bit.
Passing thousands of bills every year impresses many voters. "Our legislators are getting a lot of work done." It impresses me too - as evidence that in the last session (and every session before that) they failed to properly address anything. A legislature that does things right one year shouldn't have anything to do the next. Going into the future, it should only occasionally have to address emergent situations/problems. A legislature's main focus should be the budget, but that usually gets short shrift, as everyone spends the session scrambling to pass their pet legislation, that is nearly all aimed at putting money in the pockets of their supporters.