Posted on 12/18/2016 12:22:54 PM PST by nickcarraway
California may be the new capital of American liberalism, but everybody who likes the sound of that ought to consider the fate of three recent San Francisco ballot initiatives.
The first, Proposition Q, aimed to eliminate homeless people’s unsightly tent camps by banning sidewalk tents and empowering the police to confiscate them with 24 hours notice so long as occupants were offered beds in shelters. San Francisco has only 1,203 emergency adult shelter beds, for a homeless population of 6,700, but a second initiative, Proposition J, promised to ease that shortfall by earmarking $50 million a year from a small sales-tax increase, proposed in a third initiative, Proposition K.
In an exquisite illustration of California’s core political neurosis — the tension between our attachment to the pretty view and our desire to care for the least among us without personal inconvenience, even as our population and economy explode — we San Franciscans voted yes on Q and J, and no on K. The people spoke, in other words, and we said, “Get rid of those filthy tents and set aside heaps of money to make sure it’s done in a compassionate way so I don’t have to feel guilty, but don’t squeeze me for a dime.”
Similar contradictions were on display this month, after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland killed 36 people. We lamented the deaths, but it was easier to criticize the warehouse owner and operator than face the desperation that drove so many to live there.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Trump’s fault.
What’s the problem? Everybody wants their problems solved for free, or have the other guy pay for it. They could always start an “El Diablo” tax, and charge people with certain styles of large moustaches to fund the homeless thing. Look up Bill Richardson’s old face for reference.
Doesn't anyone on the left every sit down an simply 'think through' their policies?
We lamented the deaths, but it was easier to criticize the warehouse owner and operator than face the desperation that drove so many to live there.
Desperation did not drive folks to this place. Most of the victims were attending an event on the second floor.
The ones who lived there chose to so that they could persue thier art.
People in the Oakland warehouse were desperate to live there?? Really??? It was desperation, and not a desire to live in a loft, and mix living there with taking artistic license and being free from the rest of society?
Were there hard core homeless in the warehOuse, or was it people with Alternative lifestyles who wanted to be alone to do their own thing? I’m confused.
“Trump’s fault.”
Not quit. They will wait till after 1/20/17 before that play that card.
Let them camp out in front of Nancy Pelosi’s house. They can take a crap on her front porch.
It didn’t take long for the homeless to reappear, did it?
“but it was easier to criticize the warehouse owner and operator than face the desperation that drove so many to live there.”
Oh spare me. I’ve been to places like that when I was much younger. They are hip slick and cool. People live there to be hip slick and cool.
So I could retire to SF and get free housing? Count me in.
Kids that is where internet addiction will land ya’.
Then again, a few recent trips into Los Angeles to drop off people for Uber has really been an eye opener, there are tents everywhere across the city now.
Here's a thought, liberals: There are very few cities anywhere in the country which wouldn't have enough money to handle their entire homeless population and clear the streets within hours if it weren't for previous councils voting to NOT fully pay for retirement funds and medical expenses for existing employees.
They saddled these current budgets with billions of unpaid bills, and since you're going to kick the can down the sidewalk, it will just get worse.
Solve the public employee embezzlement train and then make real budgets based upon taxes and emergency funds. Then you can tackle all the other issues in the world. In the mean time, destroy all the red tape that prevents actual charities which are funded by donations rather than taxed. They don't cost as much, they are more flexible in actually handling the situation, and at the end of the day, will always do a MUCH better job than you ever will.
The californication political hacks keep asking for more and more street bums - from all over the country. SF already has a tilting 52 story building that they let go up
On soft wet gooey bay mud. If the politicians just hike the freebies one more notch, they’ll attract enough street bums to tip the whole filthy circus over. Problem solved
No. The left doesn’t think. Well, not rationally.
Sure! Only thing, is that it's first come, first served getting into the homeless shelters at night. Hundreds allowed in, thousands turned away. SF rolls out the welcome mat to homeless and illegals from everywhere, but the reality is that only the rich can afford to actually move into the city. Unless you have been there for decades, you can't get your foot into the door of property unless you can afford several thousands of dollars for monthly rent, or outright buy property for a million or more. Many districts have property values going up 10 percent a year, and rent increases that mirror the situation as rent control allows.
People running city government are idiots, but we all know that. No space to build new housing with an invitation for poor to come in is a fiasco. Cheaper housing is available miles away in surrounding towns, but poor people can't commute so they live in the parks or on the streets. We need a return of vagrancy laws; you can't afford to stay, then move on to elsewhere.
No. Leftists (Marxists, Progressives, etc) are all irrational. Emotions always control them so if a boy “feels” like a girl, then “s”he is. Total removal from Reality and Truth (God) and Design of male and female. Removal of Natural Laws—our Constitution and Justice System for irrationality and satanism.
These evil people are trying to destroy Rule of Law for Rule of Man. We will have insanity, where Up is Down and Evil is Good as long as we don’t return to Rule of Law (Higher Law/God’s Laws) and the only Theology which created the Age of Reason, Natural Law, Individuality, Free Will, modern science and the US Justice System. Collectives need to reduce us to irrational dependent animals. They love seeing homeless, drunk, degenerates, on the sidewalks, for it embeds their ideology of mankind, especially in the young and inexperienced and ignorant.
Their sick unnatural ideology promotes homelessness—no private property rights, no individuality, total dependency and slavery to the State.
vagrancy laws are already there.
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