Homeless Mostly Invisible as Washington Celebrates

[Broken Glass Can]

[ QUOTE ]
...as Washington Celebrates

[/ QUOTE ]

Washington is run by the Democratic Party completely and absolutely. If anyone should be held responsible, it is they.

Washington didn't celebrate yesterday. Outsiders from around the country came to Washington to celebrate, the people who live there hate Bush.

It reminds me of the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981. Several people I know who work in Federal Government agencies reported that there were celebrations at the workplace when the news that Reagan was shot came on the news. The workers there come from Washington and nearby areas, and they were the ones celebrating, while the rest of the country was shocked.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure, since I haven't read any statistics on this, and I'm not even sure that there are any, but I believe that the majority of homeless people are mentally ill.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know about the majority, but a significant portion at least are, to some degree.

[ QUOTE ]
If I recall, the surge in the homeless population came in the 80s when many government run mental health facilities were shut down. Many of those who aren't mentally ill have drug and alcohol problems. Few need help, most need treatment.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "entry interview" should cull those with severe mental problems or severe drug/alcohol addictions. Those persons so culled should be sent to the appropriate clinics or institutions for evaluation/care/treatment. Incidentally, if the USA would forgo the sillily ineffective "war on drugs", great resources would be freed up for expanded treatment centers for problems of addiction.

[ QUOTE ]
Aside from that, I understand how this would be a good program in theory, but these work-farms would be plagued with the same problems as many homeless shelters and prisons, namely rape, violence and theft.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, there are practical concerns such as you speak of. Booting people out for infractions should be a tool to keep them from causing trouble. Secondly most earnings should be deposited in a "bank" of sorts and held in trust until they leave at which time they could elect how much to withdraw in check and how much in cash.

As for problems in prisons, which is a different subject though somewhat related, I think it is disgraceful and should be unacceptable. The rules and the guards in prisons should be far stricter, and if the guards allow BS like that to continue then THEY should be prosecuted. The prison culture needs to be changed. Problem prison inmates--those who threaten or attack others--should immediately get 6 months in solitary. Hell if the inmate population is too intractable keep most of them in semi-permanent lockdown and only let them out for good behavior. No rapes etc. if they are kept in their cells and monitored. That's better than inmates having to worry about getting raped or stabbed anyway. If they're all in one-man cells they aren't going to be raping anybody. Give them soap and plenty of washcloths and they can sponge bath. If they want to exercise they can jog in place and do pushups. Enough with the bullshit; they are not there to terrorize and dominate other inmates. It shouldn't be allowed and it needn't be. And maybe if they were locked down for the entire term of their stay the prison sentence would be a better future deterrent.

[tek]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't know. I don't belong to any party.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't have to belong to a party to know that. Your implication seems to be that the government was being heartless and I basically agree with you. I'm fairly certain neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are proposing much for aiding the homeless. The homeless don't constitute a significant block of voters and obviously have no economic clout so they don't get much attention from government FWIW.

[/ QUOTE ]

My comment about not belonging to any party should have been included why. The reason is both parties have caused more problems than created solutions.

Any "solutions" have only created more problems. Take the socialist FDR New Deal programs and socialist LBJ Great Society programs. Have they solved anything. No. They just created a socialist society of teet-suckers and professional victims.

Also, purposely engineered economic activities (such as Fed monetary and interest rate activity, NAFTA, etc) have created conditions that have caused or exacerbated situations leading to joblessness and homelessness.

I've previously said in other posts that people of any country who do not have the capability of serving the interests of the Fortune 500 and SP500 companies are 'sanctioned' (noun: a mechanism of social control for enforcing a society's standards--society neaming the Establishment and standards meaning buying goods and services). The santions will be UN sponsored genocide, diseases created by Merck and Litton, wag the dog wars, etc.

The only solution I have advocated is a mass strike by the people of developed nations when freedom and economic opportunities have been diminished to unacceptable levels-- similar to what Ghandi did in India against the British.

Could this work? Yes. Will it happen? Who knows.

[EarlCat]

[ QUOTE ]
The only solution I have advocated is a mass strike by the people of developed nations when freedom and economic opportunities have been diminished to unacceptable levels-- similar to what Ghandi did in India against the British.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the poor in India are doing so well now.

[tek]

Yes, about as well as you guys in Tennessee [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[beta1607]

I live in DC trust me the homeless were still around yesterday - unless it was fomer Kerry staffers and the DNC looking unkept and begging for money.

[EarlCat]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, about as well as you guys in Tennessee [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Yesterday I saw a panhandler standing on the corner in downtown Nashville (the land of Milk and Money). He was kind enough to shake his cup at me, so I asked him for some change.

[CORed]

You seem to be assuming that most of the people with "will work for food" signs and the like are homeless. I actually believe that most of these folks are professional panhandlers. Most of them that I see have much nicer clothes and are much cleaner than the real homeless people.

[CORed]

The Democrats don't want to do anything that would help homeless people become successful. If they did become successful, a lot of them would probably become Republicans.

[moodifier]

[ QUOTE ]
The Democrats don't want to do anything that would help homeless people become successful. If they did become successful, a lot of them would probably become Republicans.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well to me it seems the Republicans are doing MUCH less. After all, most homeless people don't start out homeless, just poor. They become homeless due to whatever reason, but with an adequate amount of opportunity the majority would not be for long.

This opportunity includes entry level, low-skilled jobs which under current NAFTA provisions, are now located in third world countries or elsewhere. And of course, giving the top 1% of Americans a generous tax cut doesn't help the poor or the homeless; especially when this money could have been much more well located in areas to get them off their feet again.

Both these much-needed resources to the homeless have been trampled on by our current Republicans-and that's putting it lightly.