So I watched that video. And what I think I saw is a killing place. They are assembling all the addicts in one place with their offer of clean legal shit (to keep them hooked) and where conveniently (esp. for the dealers) they are sold the dirty shit that will kill them off.
To paraphrase the vid: "We are witnessing government's success in killing off our most vulnerable."
When I was in high school I read a book, part of it anyway--and for the life of me right now I cannot remember the name--but it was in the 'Anarchist Cookbook' genre.
UPDATE: Poor Man's James Bond--by Kurt Saxon. I'll have to research a bit more for the name of the prof...could have manufactured that memory after 35+ years, but don't think so...
A professor from UC Santa Barbara either wrote it, or wrote the preface. This was the late 80s, and India was the world's' biggest 'overpopulation' center at that time.
He wrote, stop sending them food. They outgrew their resources, the only "HUMANE" action was to let famine/disease/plague reset the population to match its resources.
I remember reading that--and that a professor at a school I wanted to attend wrote it--I echoed the statement/belief for a few months/years.
The Malthusian appeal is real for the culture in which I matured. Material gain. Money. Prestige. Education. Dog eat dog. My own home life was an absolute shitshow--had been 'less than politely' asked to move out at 16 with a boot on my 4th point of contact-now I see how my own anger, hurt, trauma added to that calloused view of the world--but I actually convinced myself that was the right response.
Rationality is not compassionate, and yet compassion cannot be removed from rationality.
These Malthusians are demonically possessed or at least influenced. Same with all the climate freaks.
Sadly, I do not believe there is a way to puncture this veneer until someone very close to them is traumatized, or a very well done movie (humanities are the only way we communicate the most important truths) that points out the end state of their policies in a way that is undeniable.
It is soulless. We, as a nation, are divorced from our souls.
"...(humanities are the only way we communicate the most important truths)..."
The problem here, and it's a big one, is that humanities are subjective, and hence make no real effort at portraying an objective reality. Hence we get "truths" only by circumstance.
This makes them ideal of entertainment, but not for public policy formation.
I would never think to make public policy from "Schindler's List", but like Andrew Brietbart said, "Politics is downstream of culture."
The humanities are subjective, but I read an interesting article about the founding CEO of Southwest Airlines, the late, great Herb Kellerher.
He was firing a pilot one day. The pilot was objecting to Herb's portrayal of his performance and said, "Herb, by every objective measure I'm a great pilot. My planes always depart and arrive on time. I've never missed a day. No safety concerns..."
Herb answered, "What you don't understand is it is the subjective things that matter."
Basically, the pilot was an asshole who did not fit into the Southwest culture that required people to work way outside their 'job descriptions' to survive.
I don't think of humanities are simply entertainment. Narrative is the delivery system of information and culture, and always has been--for millennia.
I say all of this without a single cell of artistic talent. The artists are the mordern day prophets. We ignore them at our own peril.
Sadly, our entertainment has been taken over by objective, financially driven--and now ideologically 'woke' driven agendas so art is nearly dead.
"The artists are the mordern day prophets. We ignore them at our own peril."
What can assure us that the artist truly understands the subject of his/her study? I worry that many of them simply palm off their own perceptions, colored by their preferences, as an accurate depiction of a real situation.
In my opinion, at best, art can raise questions about a subject. We then need to poke the subject to answer the questions in an objective manner.
Also, "woke" is all about subjectivity, not objectivity. Subjectively Dylan Mulvany projects some sort of feminine persona, but objectively is an XY male dressed and behaving as a caricature of a traditional female.
killing sold as kindness, so the woke rise up to help and prevent anyone from stopping the killing. That pretty much describes the past 4 years we've endured, doesn't it. The cabal are so dark.
I'm not saying this with attacking intent, but what I believe I'm seeing in many people, who, like me and probably you, is an attempt to offer a socially conscious rationale for enforcing societal controls on the homeless, who from my fairly common observation here in Portland, OR, have no capacity or intent to exercise any self-control.
I think that conforming society--those who recognize that there is both liberty and duty inherent in the social contract--should just enforce strict laws against urban homelessness and instead of implying that it's for the good of the homeless, just say that it's for the good of *conforming society*, which is the one that counts., and the homeless can choose to try to conform a bit if they want to be left alone by law enforcement and the judicial system.
They'd have to get real about mental illness, first of all. The mental hospitals have been dismantled, people let out in the street, and promised "community care" never happened. Thank the mostly lefty shrinks of the 50s and 60s. Heck, maybe they were the ones who were mental...
I hope I'm not misunderstanding, but I don't think that the massive closure of mental hospitals 50 years ago has much to do with the homeless I see on the streets of PDX today. Too long ago to have a causal connection to the phenomenon that became visible and growing 10 years ago, at most.
I live in an older close in neighborhood whose main commercial streets attract the homeless. For 32 years I've lived in the same place. Over that period I observed people who were very obviously barely functional--only enough to stay alive--out on the street, and this was well before the proliferation of powerful and cheap drugs that we see today. There were so few that they stood out and you could recognize them individually.
Simultaneously I noted that the public effects of these drugs seems very close to the behavior of these old-school mentally ill. So what I've also seen is that those here in PDX who purport to support public policy help for the current horde of street people conveniently say that most of these are mentally ill, and therefore are not responsible and they should be actively helped by the remainder of society.
But so far as I can tell--and this is not definitive, but it's how I'd bet, if forced to--is that they've got it backwards: the drug use came first, causing the symptoms of mental illness. Therefore, it is primarily a drug problem, not a clinical mental illness problem. And since drug use implies personal agency and mental illness does not, the approach can be Skinnerian and have some chance of succeeding in many.all--cases.
Yes, of course. I heard that about one third of them are mentally ill, one third are druggies and alcoholics, and one third are people either down on their luck or unwilling to work and otherwise to "get themselves together." I have known 2 homeless people. One was a schizophrenic who was otherwise very smart and lucid and managed eventually to get help and a place in a nice group home. He was on the streets for 3 years. The other was a druggie-alcoholic mooching off his aged mom. When she moved to elder housing, he was accepted by the mission based on staying clean. He was thrown out after 3 weeks, and went to live with the homeless in a tent. All he wanted was to get high and drink and hang with his buddies shooting the breeze.
The closure of the mental hospitals has much to do with this. The genuinely mental among the homeless have no place to go.. When my father went mental at 91, got violent, broke my arm, etc. it was very difficult to get him a bed in a psych ward. And they don't want them long term.
If they could weed out the mental cases, it seems it would be easier to tackle the rest, no?
Taking your estimates, and this is fine for our discussion, that would mean removing 1 out of every 3 homeless, so yes, it would help.
But I assume you're also aware of the legal difficulties in institutionalizing individuals who are non-cooperative. It's next to impossible because under current laws, no one and no agency has the authority to do so. The current laws were put in place to curb abuses in hospitalizing people against their will.
Yeah, there were once many abuses. But now is not then. Few today would want to institutionalize an annoying wife, or lobotomize an uncooperative relative. Even fewer would help them in that project.
If there is a will, laws can be changed to allow some forcible institutionalization. Right now, the will is not there. Perhaps even worse, the will is to fk up everything that can be. Because, if you do (as a politician or professional), so what? There are no consequences.
If someone is sick (addicted and lacking in hope and affection), love requires that you don't further poison them and leave, nay, assist, encourage them to rot. The meanness is that much higher when it is sponsored by authority figures and institutions.
When I saw that young woman handing out the crack/fentanyl pipes, I was thinking... it's like handing out nooses to people in danger of suicide -- under the pretext that they are more sanitary than any old rope they may find in a dumpster.
Until she is willing to walk in their shoes for 30-60 days—without any intervention or protection—she’s should be ignored.
The ratchet wasn’t dreamt up in a cube—was likely created by a guy tired of busting his knuckles.
In fact, that might be a great requirement for all local politicians on the left coast. If elected will I LIVE the consequences of my ordinances? Let’s start with your first quarter of service in the streets.
I doubt Ms Horvath would be so fervently anti gun after 90 days trying not to get raped every night.
and that really is the point, as an A+ graduate of the school for radicals she attended, she's confident she will live loftily on top of the heap, never under policies they scribble papers about after being inspired by a Julia Roberts movie on how glamourous the life of a prostitute is.
If there are not nightly assaults on women, maybe the country should get the men there Viagra. I mean something is wrong if an encampment of drug addled men don't choose to force their way with women...it is all just so deeply disgusting--and I mean the posturing/pandering/virtue signaling much more than the feces frosted encampments...
Horvath is a buffoon, completely unqualified to be in charge of anything, and an ideologue. The LA County Board of Supervisors likes to brag that all five board members are women. Nothing wrong with that, but only two are competent, Horvath and Mitchell are DEI hires who couldn’t run a lemonade stand, and the fifth is a labor organizer who wants to redistribute wealth. Thank goodness the city I live in is conservative and runs a tight ship to offset the dumbassery of the board of supervisors.
I have a running hypothesis that population density is proportional to stupidity (aka “leftism”). Cram people together in concrete boxes, and watch group think take over.
What I’m saying is Ive never met anyone that owns property with a winding gravel driveway, lined with trees and a horse paddock fence, who have asked me to use their preferred pronouns.
Diseases always proliferate best in the highly dense areas. I think that includes mind viruses, too.
But wasn't the intent of all these programmes to drive down market value, that greatest of fictions, by swamping areas with homeless mentally ill drug-users? I.e blockbusting to bring down prices make it possible for someone to buy the property on the cheap and then clean house and bring the value up again?
Pretty sure that's the real point and the believers in all these theories are just useful idiots for politicians and capitalists.
This makes more sense than anything else. "Called to be of service she/her/hers." She was probably kicked out of nun school for being too stupid to learn so she went to woke school instead. You don't have to learn anything there! "she/her/hers" is the dead giveaway. Makes me wonder how many dozens of people are dead because of her actions. B1tch!
When we used institutionalisation as a standard measure for addicts, mentally ill and severly retarded people, crime was down.
By that I mean crime against such people, but also crime where they themselves are perpetrators; anything from prostitution to B&E to fencing to theft to violent abuse was way down compared to post-deinstitutionalisation in the 1990s.
Homelessness was way down too, compared to today, for several reasons. One being that you weren't allowed to camp out on the street or in some abandoned warehouse or similar - when found, you were collected, processed, and put in any number of accommodation programmes.
Same with drug addicts; if an MD found your drug use was a compulsive behaviour, you were put in a special institution for addicts for months or years to sweat it out of you.
Yes, a very top-down, coercive and sometimes harsh and brutal system.
Which yielded magnitudes better results for everyone involved at a tenth of the cost of today's rights-based stuff.
Now, you have the "right" to starve, sleep outdoors and perish at your leisure in the ditch of your choice just as during the old Golden Age of classical liberalism (late 1800s).
Sorry for venting a bit, but I saw so many die between 1990-1995, simply because we switched from pragmatism to neoliberalism on all fronts, it still burns me to think of it.
Give the classical liberals more credit than that. They had workhouses and poorhouses and poor farms where the homeless and indigent were institutionalized if they couldn't avoid sleeping rough and getting in the way of the public. These were like modern homeless shelters but with stricter rules and they even the put the inhabitants to work to defray the cost of their care.
Oh, I largely agree with all that. The narrow point I'm making is that even in the Golden Age of Laissez-faire Capitalism the libertarian ethos of the era did not extend to a man's freedom to live drunk on the streets in a tent camp in the the town square.
We live in an era that accepts far more state intrusion in our lives and businesses than the Victorians could have imagined (remember how much you disclosed and paid last time you filed income taxes?). It shouldn't be hard to accept that state power can and should be used to keep the streets clear of homeless derelicts... But here were are.
Chris, why are you so mean to her? Right in her Twitter bio is states: "Called to be of service", though what she could possibly have any skill at or be able to do, I have no idea, because her entire career seems to rotate around being a Bossy Head Girl from the Midwest.
The modern version of this expression is: All models are wrong, but some are useful.
As a culture, we used to understand the issue of theory that becomes unmoored from facts, or even actively resistant to facts. Figuring it this intellectual problem was critical to the Scientific Revolution.
But then that level of logic and rigor became smeared as White Supremacist or some other such garbage so now we're stuck back in the longhouse of superstition.
Maybe I am just stupid, but hear me out. A large percentage of homeless people do have jobs, but unlike the housed, have been shoved into the streets because the rent is just too damn high. Maybe we could make sure that whatever it takes, and I mean whatever it takes, everyone can get a roof over their heads especially if they have work, and then we can do the blame game?
Almost everyone looking to rent or buy looks at his or her wallet and compares with the increasing cost of housing with pain if not actual despair. By my back of the envelope calculations, it takes a minimum of $31 per hour working full time to cover all living expenses - housing, food, utilities, insurance, and possibly clothing - for a crappy one bedroom apartment in California.
So yeah, I think that I do condemn our corrupt politicians and the druggies, but as an individual, even if you do everything right, if one thing goes bad like the car blows up, you get pneumonia, or laid off, you are on the streets especially if everyone you know are in the same way.
Can I assume that we all understand this?
Whangst on the corruption, the drugs, the NIMBYs, the whatever, is entertaining, but the homeless population has been growing for over forty years, and I do not believe that there is an epidemic of Americans (with their families) saying “Yes, siree Bob! I loooove sleeping in my rusted jalopy or on cardboard in a alley.”
If the encampments were full of just honest, hard-working, down-on-their-luck Joads, you wouldn't have actual man-on-the-ground reports from experienced pros like Deon Joseph telling you they're full of drunks, druggies and the mentally ill.
You're falling into the same trap of allowing your pre-formed theories based on vague peripheral evidence override contradictory better evidence of what reality actually is.
Just because the rent in Cali is too damn high doesn't mean that the average $20/hr burger flipper can't keep a roof over his head - get married, get a roommate, get a shelter bed and follow the rules, get Section 8, get a bus ticket to Texas - whatever.
Maybe when they clear out the druggies, drunks and deranged we'll find a few quirky honest folk remaining who work for a living but prefer to live the Van Life. We'll save them for last and think of something else at the time.
Homelessness is not a housing problem. It's an addiction mental health problem and those who have one or both don't want a house or a roof over their head. They want their freedom to impose their "freedom" on everyone else.
Well, not entirely. Japan does not have homeless encampments, even though rent in Tokyo is sky high and unaffordable. What they do have is small cubicles that can be rented by day, bed, bath, internet. Go to work in the morning, nice clothes, no apartment to maintain. Doable.
You mention costs but you fail to mention the proportion of the cost is taxation - and please understand that regulations are taxes. Once you realize taxation accounts for more than half the cost, you begin to understand things differently.
I hear these bureaucrats talking about their compassion but where was the compassion that shut down all the SRO/transient hotels? The police/bureaucrats blamed the drug and crime problems on the owners of the buildings which was a massive lie. The owners and the buildings were removed but there was no thought given to where the residents would wind up. The “programs “ come with so many strings attached that the majority drop out of them.
You can’t incarcerate all the addicts and you can’t force all of them into treatment all at once. Relapse happens. At this point anyone with an idea should be encouraged but instead the bureaucracy only wants one solution and they will try it again and again and again as long as public money keeps rolling in despite the lack of success.
I had to look up Deon Joseph a Democrat focused on the drug addicted homeless of Skid Row. If you are a drug addict and homeless this is the place to be, The Mission that provides food to the homeless is on Skid Row. Sometime ago, when it wasn't as bad as it is now, a friend and I ate at a place near there and decided to walk around. We meet and spoke to a few people but I will always remember this one woman, what a wonderful spirit, we probably talked, danced and sang for a good hour and a half. Not sure if she used drugs or not but I did by her some food and gave her a little cash. Skid Row is different from any other homeless encampments, a lot less crazy and more respectful maybe due to Deon Joseph showing respect to them.
I had a huge one bedroom apartment with front and back door. Huge living and dining rooms off street parking and split garage with a neighbor. The property has a triplex and a house in the back. I was only paying $650 a month and the last year I was hosting foreign exchange students that paid $900 a month. I did a lot of work and painted the entire unit. A wonderful filipino owned the property, the mother and father lived in the upstairs unit a daughter in the back house and I lived in one of the lower units. After about 9 years the parents died and the triplex was sold to a single woman from New York who, at the time I didn't know, was flipping houses. She was nice in the beginning but then she wanted me out. I complained to housing for harassment, unpermitted work, security camera that looked in to my unit. She lied to housing, listened through the wall, stole a package but returned it after hearing me on the phone with USPS. I got her permission to paint the living and dining room with my money then she wanted me out. So many things to list here but it was a living hell. My father was so concerned he drove out from Iowa to check on me. I told my dad to pay attention and listen because she wouldn't know who he was but once she did she backed off, he noticed. She finally offered relocation which I did not accept until a couple of years later. Had I not I would have been out on the streets. That money was a joke and it was hard to find any place to rent I even offered full year rent paid up front and was denied. I found a dump for $900.
Housing does nothing for the tenant even after the whole housing scandal and this was back in 2012-2013. Long story short, I became manager of this dump knowing I was going to blow the whistle. Contacted a law firm and housing this was back in 2018. Housing has done nothing but try to cite tenants for issues. The law firm is just now preparing to go to trial in September and nothing has been resolved in the building. They now eliminated the onsite manager in a 60 unit building, California law requires an onsite manager for buildings with 16 units or more.
My point is not everyone who is homeless is a drug addict. The Ellis Act has made people homeless as well as illegal evictions. There is zero protection for tenants, the tenant rights booklet is a joke and news outlet quote it as if it was gospel. It's just words on paper with nobody to enforce them and means nothing.
that is definitely the case for many. It takes a lot of money to move and a lot of money to get into a decent apartment anywhere near LA. When you don't have it, and your friends don't have extra bedrooms or money to borrow, there's no easy option of saving enough to even get to another town. People I know lived it. I was on the verge myself when I had a prolonged period of illness. Had to do a gofundme to get out of town. If you don't have rent control, rents regularly get hiked 30% and suddenly you can't afford the place you carefully selected that you could afford. A LOT of people face this kind of existence-level trauma in these cities. And the trauma, I don't doubt, causes some / many to escape with cheap drugs. Then you're truly f-ed.
I'm not endorsing any of the give-drugs-away theory, or that letting encampments fester is okay. I know that the housing first theory also hasn't worked well because the addictions have taken root and the roof overhead doesn't fix anyone's addiction. I'm pointing out that the cabal's agenda to orchestrate of all of this trauma-creating harm is ridiculously longstanding. The "you'll own nothing" part started long, LONG ago.
Oh , I never had any physical anxiety pain until I was forced to move from my "home". I literally had pain in my chest for two days after I moved, I could only look for apartments for a few hours a day it was devastating. And I'm still mad as hell almost 10 years later.
Moving to a new place ranks up near the top of “most stressful events humans experience.” Even for a “good” move. It’s definitely trauma producing when someone is forced to move against their will. It definitely can have long lasting effects. I hope those all clear for you, though.
This so true and I see so many people I know or recognize in the streets. Successful friends now in the streets, it's a very awkward feeling when we make eye contact.
Yes, the stories speak to a far more broken system than most people have the head space to comprehend. The drug addiction outcome — let’s not forget it’s spurred by the cabal / CIA flooding the streets with drugs — is just the most visible symptom.
I agree, and they created Fentanyl that is 100 times stronger than morphine. Seriously, did we need something 100 times stronger when people are already addicted to morphine. Obviously part of the plan.
One other thing that seemed odd in Los Angeles is the city turned off the water fountain in MacArthur Park at the beginning of COVID just as the mosquito season was taking hold. I wonder if they thought mosquitoes could transmit COVID infecting the homeless that filled the park by creating the stagnant water for the mosquitoes to reproduce.
Fentanyl has a very dark origin story. That’s when I got out of Pharma … when the drug company who was one of our clients announced plans for turning a dangerous deadly anesthetic into a lollipop. And FDA was okay with that. Tsf. I saw the writing on the wall.
I used to think people like this woman were a combination of insanity and stupidity. But watching the massive death and destruction caused by the mRNA injections and the attendant destruction of all laws and precedents by the policies imposed on all humans, and the fore ever wars killing millions all over the world by these same politicians and deep staters, I've concluded this is all a planned genocide meant to reduce the world's population. A group of contrived crises that would make Malthus proud.
It's hilarious! Vice-president Trump! They all stand there stone faced concerned only with the protection of their Iron Rice Bowls! Men sell themselves so cheaply!
My kids and I were out several years ago waiting in a parking lot in Lodi, CA (town of about 50K that has a disproportionate share of homeless people). While we were waiting, a woman walked through the parking lot screaming randomly to herself, and I commented to my kids that "a civilized society doesn't allow that."
I realized a moment later that they might take it the wrong way, soo I explained. It's not that she's inconvenient to normal, taxpaying citizens (although that would be a fair reason). It's about her dignity as a person and ours. A civilized people doesn't permit a fellow citizen to scream at the voices in her head at all hours of the day and night when they might be able to help quiet those voices. Civilized people try to help, and in the case of someone who is crazy, sometimes you have to help even when the the person being helped insists she doesn't want you to. Only an totally uncaring barbarian looks at such a woman and says, "well, it's her choice to scream. Nothing I can do. She's just 'doing her thing'."
Somewhere along the way, we slid toward barbarism and haven't really noticed yet.
Will be entirely offline until early next week, studying reality in person. Back soon.
Be safe.
Don't let it hurt you and have some fun.
Enablers to addiction and chaotic living, encouragers of despair and degradation; they are the definition of cruelty and dehumanizing encouragement.
You've just listed the goals and objectives of every elected Democrat.
So I watched that video. And what I think I saw is a killing place. They are assembling all the addicts in one place with their offer of clean legal shit (to keep them hooked) and where conveniently (esp. for the dealers) they are sold the dirty shit that will kill them off.
To paraphrase the vid: "We are witnessing government's success in killing off our most vulnerable."
When I was in high school I read a book, part of it anyway--and for the life of me right now I cannot remember the name--but it was in the 'Anarchist Cookbook' genre.
UPDATE: Poor Man's James Bond--by Kurt Saxon. I'll have to research a bit more for the name of the prof...could have manufactured that memory after 35+ years, but don't think so...
A professor from UC Santa Barbara either wrote it, or wrote the preface. This was the late 80s, and India was the world's' biggest 'overpopulation' center at that time.
He wrote, stop sending them food. They outgrew their resources, the only "HUMANE" action was to let famine/disease/plague reset the population to match its resources.
I remember reading that--and that a professor at a school I wanted to attend wrote it--I echoed the statement/belief for a few months/years.
The Malthusian appeal is real for the culture in which I matured. Material gain. Money. Prestige. Education. Dog eat dog. My own home life was an absolute shitshow--had been 'less than politely' asked to move out at 16 with a boot on my 4th point of contact-now I see how my own anger, hurt, trauma added to that calloused view of the world--but I actually convinced myself that was the right response.
Rationality is not compassionate, and yet compassion cannot be removed from rationality.
These Malthusians are demonically possessed or at least influenced. Same with all the climate freaks.
Sadly, I do not believe there is a way to puncture this veneer until someone very close to them is traumatized, or a very well done movie (humanities are the only way we communicate the most important truths) that points out the end state of their policies in a way that is undeniable.
It is soulless. We, as a nation, are divorced from our souls.
bsn
"...(humanities are the only way we communicate the most important truths)..."
The problem here, and it's a big one, is that humanities are subjective, and hence make no real effort at portraying an objective reality. Hence we get "truths" only by circumstance.
This makes them ideal of entertainment, but not for public policy formation.
I would never think to make public policy from "Schindler's List", but like Andrew Brietbart said, "Politics is downstream of culture."
The humanities are subjective, but I read an interesting article about the founding CEO of Southwest Airlines, the late, great Herb Kellerher.
He was firing a pilot one day. The pilot was objecting to Herb's portrayal of his performance and said, "Herb, by every objective measure I'm a great pilot. My planes always depart and arrive on time. I've never missed a day. No safety concerns..."
Herb answered, "What you don't understand is it is the subjective things that matter."
Basically, the pilot was an asshole who did not fit into the Southwest culture that required people to work way outside their 'job descriptions' to survive.
I don't think of humanities are simply entertainment. Narrative is the delivery system of information and culture, and always has been--for millennia.
I say all of this without a single cell of artistic talent. The artists are the mordern day prophets. We ignore them at our own peril.
Sadly, our entertainment has been taken over by objective, financially driven--and now ideologically 'woke' driven agendas so art is nearly dead.
Woke kills everything.
bsn
"The artists are the mordern day prophets. We ignore them at our own peril."
What can assure us that the artist truly understands the subject of his/her study? I worry that many of them simply palm off their own perceptions, colored by their preferences, as an accurate depiction of a real situation.
In my opinion, at best, art can raise questions about a subject. We then need to poke the subject to answer the questions in an objective manner.
Also, "woke" is all about subjectivity, not objectivity. Subjectively Dylan Mulvany projects some sort of feminine persona, but objectively is an XY male dressed and behaving as a caricature of a traditional female.
killing sold as kindness, so the woke rise up to help and prevent anyone from stopping the killing. That pretty much describes the past 4 years we've endured, doesn't it. The cabal are so dark.
🙌 Ain't it the truth!
I'm not saying this with attacking intent, but what I believe I'm seeing in many people, who, like me and probably you, is an attempt to offer a socially conscious rationale for enforcing societal controls on the homeless, who from my fairly common observation here in Portland, OR, have no capacity or intent to exercise any self-control.
I think that conforming society--those who recognize that there is both liberty and duty inherent in the social contract--should just enforce strict laws against urban homelessness and instead of implying that it's for the good of the homeless, just say that it's for the good of *conforming society*, which is the one that counts., and the homeless can choose to try to conform a bit if they want to be left alone by law enforcement and the judicial system.
Let's get real here, folks.
They'd have to get real about mental illness, first of all. The mental hospitals have been dismantled, people let out in the street, and promised "community care" never happened. Thank the mostly lefty shrinks of the 50s and 60s. Heck, maybe they were the ones who were mental...
I hope I'm not misunderstanding, but I don't think that the massive closure of mental hospitals 50 years ago has much to do with the homeless I see on the streets of PDX today. Too long ago to have a causal connection to the phenomenon that became visible and growing 10 years ago, at most.
I live in an older close in neighborhood whose main commercial streets attract the homeless. For 32 years I've lived in the same place. Over that period I observed people who were very obviously barely functional--only enough to stay alive--out on the street, and this was well before the proliferation of powerful and cheap drugs that we see today. There were so few that they stood out and you could recognize them individually.
Simultaneously I noted that the public effects of these drugs seems very close to the behavior of these old-school mentally ill. So what I've also seen is that those here in PDX who purport to support public policy help for the current horde of street people conveniently say that most of these are mentally ill, and therefore are not responsible and they should be actively helped by the remainder of society.
But so far as I can tell--and this is not definitive, but it's how I'd bet, if forced to--is that they've got it backwards: the drug use came first, causing the symptoms of mental illness. Therefore, it is primarily a drug problem, not a clinical mental illness problem. And since drug use implies personal agency and mental illness does not, the approach can be Skinnerian and have some chance of succeeding in many.all--cases.
Yes, of course. I heard that about one third of them are mentally ill, one third are druggies and alcoholics, and one third are people either down on their luck or unwilling to work and otherwise to "get themselves together." I have known 2 homeless people. One was a schizophrenic who was otherwise very smart and lucid and managed eventually to get help and a place in a nice group home. He was on the streets for 3 years. The other was a druggie-alcoholic mooching off his aged mom. When she moved to elder housing, he was accepted by the mission based on staying clean. He was thrown out after 3 weeks, and went to live with the homeless in a tent. All he wanted was to get high and drink and hang with his buddies shooting the breeze.
The closure of the mental hospitals has much to do with this. The genuinely mental among the homeless have no place to go.. When my father went mental at 91, got violent, broke my arm, etc. it was very difficult to get him a bed in a psych ward. And they don't want them long term.
If they could weed out the mental cases, it seems it would be easier to tackle the rest, no?
Taking your estimates, and this is fine for our discussion, that would mean removing 1 out of every 3 homeless, so yes, it would help.
But I assume you're also aware of the legal difficulties in institutionalizing individuals who are non-cooperative. It's next to impossible because under current laws, no one and no agency has the authority to do so. The current laws were put in place to curb abuses in hospitalizing people against their will.
No good deed goes unpunished... ;^)
Yeah, there were once many abuses. But now is not then. Few today would want to institutionalize an annoying wife, or lobotomize an uncooperative relative. Even fewer would help them in that project.
If there is a will, laws can be changed to allow some forcible institutionalization. Right now, the will is not there. Perhaps even worse, the will is to fk up everything that can be. Because, if you do (as a politician or professional), so what? There are no consequences.
If someone is sick (addicted and lacking in hope and affection), love requires that you don't further poison them and leave, nay, assist, encourage them to rot. The meanness is that much higher when it is sponsored by authority figures and institutions.
When I saw that young woman handing out the crack/fentanyl pipes, I was thinking... it's like handing out nooses to people in danger of suicide -- under the pretext that they are more sanitary than any old rope they may find in a dumpster.
People like that young woman have a compulsion to feel like they're saviors.
Dumb typo fixed!
My immediate thought was that I would seriously listen to Lindsey after she spent a month in a homeless encampment.
No weapons. No special undercover security. Grab your fart sack and live under the bridge.
Until she, oh my, I just looked up her X profile. 🤢…”Called to be of service.”
I had a commander, unbelievably incompetent woman, whose email was ‘servantleader@whatever.com’
Gross.
Until she is willing to walk in their shoes for 30-60 days—without any intervention or protection—she’s should be ignored.
The ratchet wasn’t dreamt up in a cube—was likely created by a guy tired of busting his knuckles.
In fact, that might be a great requirement for all local politicians on the left coast. If elected will I LIVE the consequences of my ordinances? Let’s start with your first quarter of service in the streets.
I doubt Ms Horvath would be so fervently anti gun after 90 days trying not to get raped every night.
bsn
and that really is the point, as an A+ graduate of the school for radicals she attended, she's confident she will live loftily on top of the heap, never under policies they scribble papers about after being inspired by a Julia Roberts movie on how glamourous the life of a prostitute is.
Assumes someone would want to rape her. But it is skid row.
If there are not nightly assaults on women, maybe the country should get the men there Viagra. I mean something is wrong if an encampment of drug addled men don't choose to force their way with women...it is all just so deeply disgusting--and I mean the posturing/pandering/virtue signaling much more than the feces frosted encampments...
bsn
Horvath is a buffoon, completely unqualified to be in charge of anything, and an ideologue. The LA County Board of Supervisors likes to brag that all five board members are women. Nothing wrong with that, but only two are competent, Horvath and Mitchell are DEI hires who couldn’t run a lemonade stand, and the fifth is a labor organizer who wants to redistribute wealth. Thank goodness the city I live in is conservative and runs a tight ship to offset the dumbassery of the board of supervisors.
I have a running hypothesis that population density is proportional to stupidity (aka “leftism”). Cram people together in concrete boxes, and watch group think take over.
What I’m saying is Ive never met anyone that owns property with a winding gravel driveway, lined with trees and a horse paddock fence, who have asked me to use their preferred pronouns.
Diseases always proliferate best in the highly dense areas. I think that includes mind viruses, too.
“Theory is louder. Insane, toxic, and louder …”
Great line!
Ideology in the place of reality seems to be our problem.
Ideology in the place of RELIGION seems to be our problem.
Get this Church Lady back into a pew and let her work out her need for atonement and salvation with God and have her leave the rest of us alone.
“People like Lindsey Horvath deserve an awakening that matches the character of the lives people live under the weight of her delusions.” 🔥
You mean she should wake up to some guy with a shopping cart taking a poop on her bed.
Yes!
But wasn't the intent of all these programmes to drive down market value, that greatest of fictions, by swamping areas with homeless mentally ill drug-users? I.e blockbusting to bring down prices make it possible for someone to buy the property on the cheap and then clean house and bring the value up again?
Pretty sure that's the real point and the believers in all these theories are just useful idiots for politicians and capitalists.
This makes more sense than anything else. "Called to be of service she/her/hers." She was probably kicked out of nun school for being too stupid to learn so she went to woke school instead. You don't have to learn anything there! "she/her/hers" is the dead giveaway. Makes me wonder how many dozens of people are dead because of her actions. B1tch!
I know this for a fact:
When we used institutionalisation as a standard measure for addicts, mentally ill and severly retarded people, crime was down.
By that I mean crime against such people, but also crime where they themselves are perpetrators; anything from prostitution to B&E to fencing to theft to violent abuse was way down compared to post-deinstitutionalisation in the 1990s.
Homelessness was way down too, compared to today, for several reasons. One being that you weren't allowed to camp out on the street or in some abandoned warehouse or similar - when found, you were collected, processed, and put in any number of accommodation programmes.
Same with drug addicts; if an MD found your drug use was a compulsive behaviour, you were put in a special institution for addicts for months or years to sweat it out of you.
Yes, a very top-down, coercive and sometimes harsh and brutal system.
Which yielded magnitudes better results for everyone involved at a tenth of the cost of today's rights-based stuff.
Now, you have the "right" to starve, sleep outdoors and perish at your leisure in the ditch of your choice just as during the old Golden Age of classical liberalism (late 1800s).
Sorry for venting a bit, but I saw so many die between 1990-1995, simply because we switched from pragmatism to neoliberalism on all fronts, it still burns me to think of it.
Give the classical liberals more credit than that. They had workhouses and poorhouses and poor farms where the homeless and indigent were institutionalized if they couldn't avoid sleeping rough and getting in the way of the public. These were like modern homeless shelters but with stricter rules and they even the put the inhabitants to work to defray the cost of their care.
Go re-watch Oliver Twist some time.
Or: I could re-read our historical archives of that era.
Instead of Oliver Twist, look up infant mortality of London in the 1800s. In the worst areas, it was 300 out of 1 000 newborns.
Oh, I largely agree with all that. The narrow point I'm making is that even in the Golden Age of Laissez-faire Capitalism the libertarian ethos of the era did not extend to a man's freedom to live drunk on the streets in a tent camp in the the town square.
We live in an era that accepts far more state intrusion in our lives and businesses than the Victorians could have imagined (remember how much you disclosed and paid last time you filed income taxes?). It shouldn't be hard to accept that state power can and should be used to keep the streets clear of homeless derelicts... But here were are.
Chris, why are you so mean to her? Right in her Twitter bio is states: "Called to be of service", though what she could possibly have any skill at or be able to do, I have no idea, because her entire career seems to rotate around being a Bossy Head Girl from the Midwest.
Enjoy reality! I found a bunch of it in Texas last week. It was pretty good there.
"A map is not the territory."
- Alfred Korzybski, 1931
The modern version of this expression is: All models are wrong, but some are useful.
As a culture, we used to understand the issue of theory that becomes unmoored from facts, or even actively resistant to facts. Figuring it this intellectual problem was critical to the Scientific Revolution.
But then that level of logic and rigor became smeared as White Supremacist or some other such garbage so now we're stuck back in the longhouse of superstition.
Maybe I am just stupid, but hear me out. A large percentage of homeless people do have jobs, but unlike the housed, have been shoved into the streets because the rent is just too damn high. Maybe we could make sure that whatever it takes, and I mean whatever it takes, everyone can get a roof over their heads especially if they have work, and then we can do the blame game?
Almost everyone looking to rent or buy looks at his or her wallet and compares with the increasing cost of housing with pain if not actual despair. By my back of the envelope calculations, it takes a minimum of $31 per hour working full time to cover all living expenses - housing, food, utilities, insurance, and possibly clothing - for a crappy one bedroom apartment in California.
So yeah, I think that I do condemn our corrupt politicians and the druggies, but as an individual, even if you do everything right, if one thing goes bad like the car blows up, you get pneumonia, or laid off, you are on the streets especially if everyone you know are in the same way.
Can I assume that we all understand this?
Whangst on the corruption, the drugs, the NIMBYs, the whatever, is entertaining, but the homeless population has been growing for over forty years, and I do not believe that there is an epidemic of Americans (with their families) saying “Yes, siree Bob! I loooove sleeping in my rusted jalopy or on cardboard in a alley.”
Please, if anyone does say that, let me know.
If the encampments were full of just honest, hard-working, down-on-their-luck Joads, you wouldn't have actual man-on-the-ground reports from experienced pros like Deon Joseph telling you they're full of drunks, druggies and the mentally ill.
You're falling into the same trap of allowing your pre-formed theories based on vague peripheral evidence override contradictory better evidence of what reality actually is.
Just because the rent in Cali is too damn high doesn't mean that the average $20/hr burger flipper can't keep a roof over his head - get married, get a roommate, get a shelter bed and follow the rules, get Section 8, get a bus ticket to Texas - whatever.
Maybe when they clear out the druggies, drunks and deranged we'll find a few quirky honest folk remaining who work for a living but prefer to live the Van Life. We'll save them for last and think of something else at the time.
Homelessness is not a housing problem. It's an addiction mental health problem and those who have one or both don't want a house or a roof over their head. They want their freedom to impose their "freedom" on everyone else.
Well, not entirely. Japan does not have homeless encampments, even though rent in Tokyo is sky high and unaffordable. What they do have is small cubicles that can be rented by day, bed, bath, internet. Go to work in the morning, nice clothes, no apartment to maintain. Doable.
When you assume….
You mention costs but you fail to mention the proportion of the cost is taxation - and please understand that regulations are taxes. Once you realize taxation accounts for more than half the cost, you begin to understand things differently.
I hear these bureaucrats talking about their compassion but where was the compassion that shut down all the SRO/transient hotels? The police/bureaucrats blamed the drug and crime problems on the owners of the buildings which was a massive lie. The owners and the buildings were removed but there was no thought given to where the residents would wind up. The “programs “ come with so many strings attached that the majority drop out of them.
You can’t incarcerate all the addicts and you can’t force all of them into treatment all at once. Relapse happens. At this point anyone with an idea should be encouraged but instead the bureaucracy only wants one solution and they will try it again and again and again as long as public money keeps rolling in despite the lack of success.
Some do preferbto live on the streets and reject offers of shelter
I am sure that there are, but what of the ones who don’t?
It's a balance between those in genuine need and a million would-be scammers. It's not easy. Good People can disagree on the day to day.
I had to look up Deon Joseph a Democrat focused on the drug addicted homeless of Skid Row. If you are a drug addict and homeless this is the place to be, The Mission that provides food to the homeless is on Skid Row. Sometime ago, when it wasn't as bad as it is now, a friend and I ate at a place near there and decided to walk around. We meet and spoke to a few people but I will always remember this one woman, what a wonderful spirit, we probably talked, danced and sang for a good hour and a half. Not sure if she used drugs or not but I did by her some food and gave her a little cash. Skid Row is different from any other homeless encampments, a lot less crazy and more respectful maybe due to Deon Joseph showing respect to them.
I had a huge one bedroom apartment with front and back door. Huge living and dining rooms off street parking and split garage with a neighbor. The property has a triplex and a house in the back. I was only paying $650 a month and the last year I was hosting foreign exchange students that paid $900 a month. I did a lot of work and painted the entire unit. A wonderful filipino owned the property, the mother and father lived in the upstairs unit a daughter in the back house and I lived in one of the lower units. After about 9 years the parents died and the triplex was sold to a single woman from New York who, at the time I didn't know, was flipping houses. She was nice in the beginning but then she wanted me out. I complained to housing for harassment, unpermitted work, security camera that looked in to my unit. She lied to housing, listened through the wall, stole a package but returned it after hearing me on the phone with USPS. I got her permission to paint the living and dining room with my money then she wanted me out. So many things to list here but it was a living hell. My father was so concerned he drove out from Iowa to check on me. I told my dad to pay attention and listen because she wouldn't know who he was but once she did she backed off, he noticed. She finally offered relocation which I did not accept until a couple of years later. Had I not I would have been out on the streets. That money was a joke and it was hard to find any place to rent I even offered full year rent paid up front and was denied. I found a dump for $900.
Housing does nothing for the tenant even after the whole housing scandal and this was back in 2012-2013. Long story short, I became manager of this dump knowing I was going to blow the whistle. Contacted a law firm and housing this was back in 2018. Housing has done nothing but try to cite tenants for issues. The law firm is just now preparing to go to trial in September and nothing has been resolved in the building. They now eliminated the onsite manager in a 60 unit building, California law requires an onsite manager for buildings with 16 units or more.
My point is not everyone who is homeless is a drug addict. The Ellis Act has made people homeless as well as illegal evictions. There is zero protection for tenants, the tenant rights booklet is a joke and news outlet quote it as if it was gospel. It's just words on paper with nobody to enforce them and means nothing.
that is definitely the case for many. It takes a lot of money to move and a lot of money to get into a decent apartment anywhere near LA. When you don't have it, and your friends don't have extra bedrooms or money to borrow, there's no easy option of saving enough to even get to another town. People I know lived it. I was on the verge myself when I had a prolonged period of illness. Had to do a gofundme to get out of town. If you don't have rent control, rents regularly get hiked 30% and suddenly you can't afford the place you carefully selected that you could afford. A LOT of people face this kind of existence-level trauma in these cities. And the trauma, I don't doubt, causes some / many to escape with cheap drugs. Then you're truly f-ed.
I'm not endorsing any of the give-drugs-away theory, or that letting encampments fester is okay. I know that the housing first theory also hasn't worked well because the addictions have taken root and the roof overhead doesn't fix anyone's addiction. I'm pointing out that the cabal's agenda to orchestrate of all of this trauma-creating harm is ridiculously longstanding. The "you'll own nothing" part started long, LONG ago.
Oh , I never had any physical anxiety pain until I was forced to move from my "home". I literally had pain in my chest for two days after I moved, I could only look for apartments for a few hours a day it was devastating. And I'm still mad as hell almost 10 years later.
Moving to a new place ranks up near the top of “most stressful events humans experience.” Even for a “good” move. It’s definitely trauma producing when someone is forced to move against their will. It definitely can have long lasting effects. I hope those all clear for you, though.
It's been a slow process, thanks!
I had to get rid of all my new furniture, new bed, washer and dryer and had to sell my piano.
This so true and I see so many people I know or recognize in the streets. Successful friends now in the streets, it's a very awkward feeling when we make eye contact.
Yes, the stories speak to a far more broken system than most people have the head space to comprehend. The drug addiction outcome — let’s not forget it’s spurred by the cabal / CIA flooding the streets with drugs — is just the most visible symptom.
I agree, and they created Fentanyl that is 100 times stronger than morphine. Seriously, did we need something 100 times stronger when people are already addicted to morphine. Obviously part of the plan.
One other thing that seemed odd in Los Angeles is the city turned off the water fountain in MacArthur Park at the beginning of COVID just as the mosquito season was taking hold. I wonder if they thought mosquitoes could transmit COVID infecting the homeless that filled the park by creating the stagnant water for the mosquitoes to reproduce.
Fentanyl has a very dark origin story. That’s when I got out of Pharma … when the drug company who was one of our clients announced plans for turning a dangerous deadly anesthetic into a lollipop. And FDA was okay with that. Tsf. I saw the writing on the wall.
I remember hearing about the lollipops. There are some seriously sick people abusing and taking an advantage of these people. It's got to end somehow.
I used to think people like this woman were a combination of insanity and stupidity. But watching the massive death and destruction caused by the mRNA injections and the attendant destruction of all laws and precedents by the policies imposed on all humans, and the fore ever wars killing millions all over the world by these same politicians and deep staters, I've concluded this is all a planned genocide meant to reduce the world's population. A group of contrived crises that would make Malthus proud.
Danny Huckabee
President Of Ukraine- Putin
Er
President Alinksky
I wouldn’t have picked VP Trump to be Vice President because she’s not qualified.
Let’s start there.
https://substack.com/@counterspin/note/c-61689652?r=91o16&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
It's hilarious! Vice-president Trump! They all stand there stone faced concerned only with the protection of their Iron Rice Bowls! Men sell themselves so cheaply!
My kids and I were out several years ago waiting in a parking lot in Lodi, CA (town of about 50K that has a disproportionate share of homeless people). While we were waiting, a woman walked through the parking lot screaming randomly to herself, and I commented to my kids that "a civilized society doesn't allow that."
I realized a moment later that they might take it the wrong way, soo I explained. It's not that she's inconvenient to normal, taxpaying citizens (although that would be a fair reason). It's about her dignity as a person and ours. A civilized people doesn't permit a fellow citizen to scream at the voices in her head at all hours of the day and night when they might be able to help quiet those voices. Civilized people try to help, and in the case of someone who is crazy, sometimes you have to help even when the the person being helped insists she doesn't want you to. Only an totally uncaring barbarian looks at such a woman and says, "well, it's her choice to scream. Nothing I can do. She's just 'doing her thing'."
Somewhere along the way, we slid toward barbarism and haven't really noticed yet.
Liberals look for immediate gratification of their "feel good" policies but never look at the long term results.