My opinion about homelessness is this. Some need help and shelter; they are candidates for programs to put them back into the housing/job/consumption rat race. Others have mental problems or various dependencies; they need more than a simple leg up; you are spinning your wheels if you try to fix things by putting them into a shelter only. Still others are homeless by choice, by lifestyle, what we used to call hobos.
Tough love implies that we don't coddle those in categories 2 and 3. It is a long term problem, and a few nights shelter won't accomplish a damn thing besides providing a few nights shelter.
I believe that there ought to be places to go and to stay with minimal strings. A sort of hobo incampment or Hooverville (Obamaville or Bushville depending on your persuasion) where the homeless can fend for themselves with only a smattering of rules for public health and safety.
Back in 2006 when I began thinking about homelessness and posting about it in a forum (the old Lubbockonline forum, now defunct), I envisioned a tract of land with concrete pads partly covered by a metal awning, with bathrooms, showers, and lockers big enough to accomodate duffels or sleeping bags, all under the occasional eye of one of Lubbock's finest. The only rules being no booze, no drugs, no weapons, and don't bother anybody.
Residents/campers would be free to build their own abode out of scavenged cardboard, plywood, whatever, without code restrictions.
It's a matter of freedom. Those who are homeless need to be free to be homeless, without being preached to or looked down on or changed.
And for the rest of us, it is freedom too, from the responsibility to provide for those who do not provide for themselves. It is the libertarian approach to homelessness. We don't want to be too nice to the homeless. Respectful, helpful, but not too nice.
So, I imagined an incampment in Lubbock, not too far from a free meal or public transportation, in the canyon off East 19th Street, down in the canyon out of the wind. Peppermint Trees, after the hobo song.
As it turned out, the location I liked for the incampment is a few hundred yards south of what is now Tent City. Tent City is not what I imagined, but it is mighty close.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
More on Tent City and Homelessness
There was a fine letter to the newspaper here: http://lubbockonline.com/editorial-letters/2011-10-23/letter-solution-homeless-tent-village-zoning-sorely-needed#comment-194107
Here's my comment:
If it can be shown the city council on Thursday that crime has not increased in the area, then surely the council will see that the objections of nearby business owners are based on smoke.
There is a valid argument that the presence of Tent City reduces crime in the area.
Paul Beane is pushing for 4 walls and a roof. Well, 4 walls and a roof mean more expense, more regulation, more rules for the homeless to follow and thus more selectivity.
Even Tent City is not for everyone, and park benches downtown are occupied at night, as are sheltered spots under certain trees or against certain walls.
What is needed is a way of helping without enabling and without strings. Tent City comes close to that.
Here's my comment:
If it can be shown the city council on Thursday that crime has not increased in the area, then surely the council will see that the objections of nearby business owners are based on smoke.
There is a valid argument that the presence of Tent City reduces crime in the area.
Paul Beane is pushing for 4 walls and a roof. Well, 4 walls and a roof mean more expense, more regulation, more rules for the homeless to follow and thus more selectivity.
Even Tent City is not for everyone, and park benches downtown are occupied at night, as are sheltered spots under certain trees or against certain walls.
What is needed is a way of helping without enabling and without strings. Tent City comes close to that.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Populism, Marxism, and Don May
When you want to put down an enemy, you get out your paintbrush and paint over the picture of your enemy, putting on pointy ears, horns, forked tail, and hoofs. We are conditioned how to interpret that picture: It's the devil! There are other devils we are conditioned to fear, and one of those is the name of Karl Marx.
Don May, the retired doc with too much time on his hands whose untra-conservative John Bircher blog is flogged by the Avalanche-Journal to try to rescue it's flagging circulation among its ultra-conservative, Lubbock base*, recently wrote this: "Marxists are the barbarians of modern history. Marxists purposely create class hatred and envy to attract and enlarge their political base."
Now why on earth would Don May be bashing Marxists, in an era when Russia and China have gone to the "greed is good" side of the equation and about the only communist country left is Cuba and Karl Marx is in greater decline as a prophet of history than at any other time after the publication of Das Kapital? Was May coming out of a bad dream where his retirement accounts at Merrill-Lynch were being assailed by barbarian hoardes?
Yes and no. There is method in his madness. For years now May has been painting Obama and the Democrats as socialists/Communists out to grab his pocketbook. And we, the readers, are conditioned from birth to regard Communists and communism as the ultimate baddie, after Judas and Osama.
Right now, May along with other ultra-conservatives are worried about a new popular movement. They worry that it might not fizzle out but take hold in ways that could threaten the value of their portfolios and the big spenders like the Koch Brothers who fund the Republican Party. They are worried about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. They are worried about populism. They are worried about the power of the people.
Don May takes a warped and selective view of history. Warped by longtime affiliation with the John Birch Society View of the Universe and by the solipsism of extreme conservatism.
Fact was, one irritant that sparked off the American Revolution was popular hostility toward rich and influential Tories. Which was used and inflamed by clever manipulators like Samuel Adams.
The Civil War began partly because of the resentment norterners felt toward rich planters who augmented their wealth by the use of slaves. Apart from matters of fairness and civil rights, slaves were seen as unfair competition to paid workmen, sort of the way we today think of our jobs exported to El Salvador, Bangladesh, and Honduras.
The driving force of American politics after 1870 or so was the conflict between big banks and big railroads on one side and farmers on the other; free silver, and so on. Which morphed into conflict between big corporations and trusts on one side and the working class on the other. Which morphed into the war between the owners of companies and the politicians they bought and the union movement.
America has been a textbook of class struggle and economic conflict.
What is happening now in these Wall Street Protests are nothing new. They are not Marxist, they are populist. They are the people versus those who feed upon the people.
That said, I don't think the demonstrations will last. Too few are hungry enough and desperate enough or innured to hardship enough. No modern American has the balls to stand up to the clubs of Pinkertons and the bullets of national guardsmen the way laborers did a hundred years ago, for example. There are so many distractions in our consumption-driven lives; we suffer from national ADHD and will soon lose focus and wander off.
*I don't visit May's blog, nor argue there, because every click on that blog and every disagreement posted is a point increase in the blog's internet ratings and a victory for May. I saw the quote because nearly every hard copy issue of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal carries a quote from May in large print on page 2. (Damn, I have to stop subscribing to that newspaper! But I ought not to complain; back when the newspaper hosted an internet forum, they selected a quote from one of my posts often enough.)
Don May, the retired doc with too much time on his hands whose untra-conservative John Bircher blog is flogged by the Avalanche-Journal to try to rescue it's flagging circulation among its ultra-conservative, Lubbock base*, recently wrote this: "Marxists are the barbarians of modern history. Marxists purposely create class hatred and envy to attract and enlarge their political base."
Now why on earth would Don May be bashing Marxists, in an era when Russia and China have gone to the "greed is good" side of the equation and about the only communist country left is Cuba and Karl Marx is in greater decline as a prophet of history than at any other time after the publication of Das Kapital? Was May coming out of a bad dream where his retirement accounts at Merrill-Lynch were being assailed by barbarian hoardes?
Yes and no. There is method in his madness. For years now May has been painting Obama and the Democrats as socialists/Communists out to grab his pocketbook. And we, the readers, are conditioned from birth to regard Communists and communism as the ultimate baddie, after Judas and Osama.
Right now, May along with other ultra-conservatives are worried about a new popular movement. They worry that it might not fizzle out but take hold in ways that could threaten the value of their portfolios and the big spenders like the Koch Brothers who fund the Republican Party. They are worried about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. They are worried about populism. They are worried about the power of the people.
Don May takes a warped and selective view of history. Warped by longtime affiliation with the John Birch Society View of the Universe and by the solipsism of extreme conservatism.
Fact was, one irritant that sparked off the American Revolution was popular hostility toward rich and influential Tories. Which was used and inflamed by clever manipulators like Samuel Adams.
The Civil War began partly because of the resentment norterners felt toward rich planters who augmented their wealth by the use of slaves. Apart from matters of fairness and civil rights, slaves were seen as unfair competition to paid workmen, sort of the way we today think of our jobs exported to El Salvador, Bangladesh, and Honduras.
The driving force of American politics after 1870 or so was the conflict between big banks and big railroads on one side and farmers on the other; free silver, and so on. Which morphed into conflict between big corporations and trusts on one side and the working class on the other. Which morphed into the war between the owners of companies and the politicians they bought and the union movement.
America has been a textbook of class struggle and economic conflict.
What is happening now in these Wall Street Protests are nothing new. They are not Marxist, they are populist. They are the people versus those who feed upon the people.
That said, I don't think the demonstrations will last. Too few are hungry enough and desperate enough or innured to hardship enough. No modern American has the balls to stand up to the clubs of Pinkertons and the bullets of national guardsmen the way laborers did a hundred years ago, for example. There are so many distractions in our consumption-driven lives; we suffer from national ADHD and will soon lose focus and wander off.
*I don't visit May's blog, nor argue there, because every click on that blog and every disagreement posted is a point increase in the blog's internet ratings and a victory for May. I saw the quote because nearly every hard copy issue of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal carries a quote from May in large print on page 2. (Damn, I have to stop subscribing to that newspaper! But I ought not to complain; back when the newspaper hosted an internet forum, they selected a quote from one of my posts often enough.)
Monday, October 3, 2011
About Health Care
Yes, risky behavior can lead to disease or accident, and it is not fair that those who are careless with their health should expect the rest of us to pay when they are not able to.
While not smoking, not becoming significantly overweight, not drinking too much or being a good driver lowers risk, it doesn't prevent bad things from happening. Accident and disease can happen to anyone, regardless of their choices.
And when accident or disease do happen, the cost is often catastrophic. A broken leg and one day hospitalization can break a family's budget if they have to pay for it. The cost of insurance can break a family if they bear the full cost of the premiums.
The "health insurance" everybody has is that emergencies have to be taken care of at the county hospital regardless of ability to pay. Which means that Lubbock County taxpayers are providing a kind of health insurance for those who can't pay; it's already factored into our taxes.
Some can pay a little, and when they are threatened by a UMC lawsuit, they can get UMC to agree to accept a fraction, say 1/5 or 1/3 as payment in full. Which -- you guessed it! -- still leaves taxpayers in the lurch.
Other hospitals including "non-profits" like Covenant will transfer non-insured emergency patients to UMC if time permits, so that county taxpayers and not the "non-profit" will be stuck with the bill. (Thought non-profit hospitals don't worry about their bottom line? That they were in the harity business? Not necessarily.)
It's complicated. I'm tending to think that a big part of the problem has been government and health industry control of medicine and physician licensing. We need less expensive alternatives to physicians and hospitals. Allow RNs and nurse practitioners to do more of what physicians do now. Streamline medical education for some medical fields, by having a 4-year medical program beginning with college freshmen, so that one graduates from college as a doctor, eliminating 3-4 years of minimally necessary and duplicative training. Instigate price wars between doctors and between hospitals. And imo when a non-profit hospital turns away a patient who can't pay, they ought to lose their non-profit status. In fact, non-profits ought to demonstrate that their fees are lower than those of for-profit hospitals.
While not smoking, not becoming significantly overweight, not drinking too much or being a good driver lowers risk, it doesn't prevent bad things from happening. Accident and disease can happen to anyone, regardless of their choices.
And when accident or disease do happen, the cost is often catastrophic. A broken leg and one day hospitalization can break a family's budget if they have to pay for it. The cost of insurance can break a family if they bear the full cost of the premiums.
The "health insurance" everybody has is that emergencies have to be taken care of at the county hospital regardless of ability to pay. Which means that Lubbock County taxpayers are providing a kind of health insurance for those who can't pay; it's already factored into our taxes.
Some can pay a little, and when they are threatened by a UMC lawsuit, they can get UMC to agree to accept a fraction, say 1/5 or 1/3 as payment in full. Which -- you guessed it! -- still leaves taxpayers in the lurch.
Other hospitals including "non-profits" like Covenant will transfer non-insured emergency patients to UMC if time permits, so that county taxpayers and not the "non-profit" will be stuck with the bill. (Thought non-profit hospitals don't worry about their bottom line? That they were in the harity business? Not necessarily.)
It's complicated. I'm tending to think that a big part of the problem has been government and health industry control of medicine and physician licensing. We need less expensive alternatives to physicians and hospitals. Allow RNs and nurse practitioners to do more of what physicians do now. Streamline medical education for some medical fields, by having a 4-year medical program beginning with college freshmen, so that one graduates from college as a doctor, eliminating 3-4 years of minimally necessary and duplicative training. Instigate price wars between doctors and between hospitals. And imo when a non-profit hospital turns away a patient who can't pay, they ought to lose their non-profit status. In fact, non-profits ought to demonstrate that their fees are lower than those of for-profit hospitals.
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