Send our "problem" elsewhere
New York City has tried it. So has San Francisco and Baton Rouge. Now Hawaii is going to give sending the homeless back "home" a try. Once again people are trying to move a problem rather than dealing with it, figuring "out of sight, out of mind."
They claim the idea is to send these homeless people back to their loved ones. Truth be told, if the loved ones wanted them back, they'd make it happen. Or if these homeless people wanted to be back home, that's where they'd be. The program's supporters claim that in order to qualify, a homeless person will have to be "mentally sound."
Now while there are many people out on the streets who are of sound mind, how do they propose to ensure they aren't taking a mentally ill person and sending them off to another city or state so they can provide social programs for them? The issue of mental illness among the homeless cannot be ignored.
I may be a fiscal conservative, but I want to see everyone have a roof over their head, food in their bellies and emergent medical care available to them. Self-reliance doesn't work when people aren't capable of caring for themselves. Some of the homeless are definitely able to care for themselves, they've just fallen on hard times. The answer for them is to improve our economy. The homeless I'm concerned about are those who can't provide for their own needs through conventional methods.
The same things goes on right here in Los Angeles County. Cities have been found to have taken homeless from their streets and transported them to L.A.'s Skid Row. Again, out of sight out of mind.
If you let your dog take his "dump" in your neighbor's yard, you may have kept your own yard clean. But it isn't right. Nor is it right to take a problem in your area and handle it by sending it somewhere else.
* * *
Defense "hawks" in Congress and senior officials at the Pentagon are saying that the cuts mandated by sequestration will harm the nation's defense and could lead to dire circumstance in the future. That we might be less "secure" within our borders because of these cuts may be accurate. However, that doesn't mean there isn't room to reduce military spending without reducing the readiness of the U.S. Military.
There is an organization called the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). They've had five rounds of closure recommendations since the late 1980s. The most recent round was in 2005. There were 13 bases scheduled for closure on the commission's initial recommendations. Then the members of Congress and the public whose financial future is tied to those locations were allowed to weigh in. Five of the 13, or more than one third of the facilities that were originally recommended for closure were removed from the list.
Therein lies the problem. Members of the House and Senate who are willing to deal with the reality that as a nation we continue to write checks from an apparently unlimited overdraft account; aren't willing to bring the pain back home to the voters who keep sending them to Washington, D.C.
In Monterey, CA, there is an Army post. The Presidio of Monterey is the last of the California Presidios with an active military installation on it. Currently it is home to the Defense Language Institute's Foreign Language School (DLIFLC). The Defense Language Institute has an English Language School at a base in San Antonio, Texas. This means separate administrative and logistics staffing to support these two schools. Two sets of facilities. If the DLIFLC were to be moved to Joint Base San Antonio, Presidio of Monterey could be shuttered.
Just try and make that happen. Senators Feinstein and Boxer would have an immediate conniption fit. They and the members of the House from California would rise up and smite whoever was trying to take this cash cow out of California. Never mind how much money might be saved by consolidation and realignment. We MUST keep this facility here in CA to preserve military readiness.
Obviously, this is a crock. You can teach languages to military (and other) personnel anywhere. One school. One set of support personnel. The same is true of so many military programs and operations that all of the required spending cuts could be made if the political will to make tough choices existed in our elected leadership. In the minds of the 535 of us who sit in D.C. and decide, as long as they keep bringing home the pork, the voters will send them back to D.C. to raise pigs.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Anyone who bought into Ariel Castro's claims that he's not a monster, but sick with a sexual addiction, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you at a reasonable price.
Should Julian Assange be using the word "alleged" in describing the documents leaked by convicted felon Bradley Manning? No. Julian, he's not a whistleblower, he's a convicted criminal. President Obama didn't promise to protect those who commit espionage and try to disguise it as espionage.
I don't have a problem with a police chief making a profanity laced, tirade video about his right to keep his guns. But I question the intelligence of doing something dumb like that.
A retired doctor was ordered by an appellate court to repay $500,000 in insurance benefits that he'd received from an accident that took the life of his son. The other passengers in the car, all of whom survived, didn't get much from the original trial court and that was overturned on appeal. So was he right or wrong in repaying $150,000 of that amount in bags of loose quarters? The coins weighed four tons.
Could we go for at least a year without Monica Lewinsky trending on Yahoo?
So if A-Roid is suspended for all of this season and next, are the Yankees a better team, or worse off than they are now? I say better.
This Date in History:
1291 – The Old Swiss Confederacy is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter.
1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.
1620 – The Speedwell leaves Delfshaven to bring pilgrims to America by way of England.
1664 – The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.
1759 – Seven Years' War: The Battle of Minden, an allied Anglo-German army victory over the French. In Britain this was one of a number of events that constituted the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 and is celebrated as Minden Day by certain British Army regiments.
1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) – Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.
1800 – The Acts of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1801 – First Barbary War: The American schooner USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli in a single-ship action off the coast of modern-day Libya.
1831 – A new London Bridge opens.
1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.
1838 – Non-laborer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1840 – Laborer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1842 – The Lombard Street Riot erupts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
1855 – The first ascent of Monte Rosa, the second highest summit in the Alps.
1876 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
1894 – The First Sino-Japanese War erupts between Japan and China over Korea.
1907 – The start of the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island, the origin of the worldwide Scouting movement.
1914 – Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilizes because of World War I.
1927 – The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
1937 – Josip Broz Tito reads the resolution "Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH" to the constitutive congress of KPH (Croatian Communist Party) in woods near Samobor.
1944 – The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
1957 – The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
1960 – Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France.
1964 – The Belgian Congo is renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo
1966 – Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
1966 – Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
1968 – The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
1974 – Cyprus dispute: The United Nations Security Council authorizes the UNFICYP to create the "Green Line", dividing Cyprus into two zones.
1975 – CSCE Final Act creates the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
1980 – A train crash kills 18 people in County Cork, Ireland.
1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world's first democratically elected female head of state
1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, northwest England
1993 – The Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 comes to a peak
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Claudius, Roman Emperor
Pertinax, Roman Emperor
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Herman Melville
Robert Todd Lincoln
Kinsan Ginsan (Japanese identical twins who both lived to be more than 105 years of age)
Jack Kramer
Lawrence Eagleburger
Dom DeLuise
Teri Shields
Yves Saint Laurent
Ron Brown
Jerry Garcia
Giancarlo Giannini
Andrew G. Vajna
Dennis Zine
Avi Arad
Tom Leykis
Michael Penn
Jesse Borrego
Demian Bechir
Sam Mendes
Tanya Reid
Tempestt Bledsoe
Movie quotes today comes from the underappreciated Mel Brooks film "Spaceballs." The late Dom DeLuise provided the voice of "Pizza the Hutt":
Lone Starr: A million? That's unfair.
Pizza the Hutt: Unfair to payor but not to payee. But you're gonna pay it, or else!
Barf: Or else what?
Pizza the Hutt: Tell him, Vinnie.
Vinnie: Or else pizza is gonna send out for *you*!
#2
Princess Vespa: I am Princess Vespa, daughter of Roland, King of the Druids.
Lone Starr: Oh great. That's all we needed. A Druish princess.
Barf: Funny, she doesn't look Druish.
#3
Lone Starr: I still don't understand how I'm going to lift that big statue with this little ring.
Yogurt: Never underestimate the power of the Schwartz!
#4
Dark Helmet: What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? CHICKEN?
They claim the idea is to send these homeless people back to their loved ones. Truth be told, if the loved ones wanted them back, they'd make it happen. Or if these homeless people wanted to be back home, that's where they'd be. The program's supporters claim that in order to qualify, a homeless person will have to be "mentally sound."
Now while there are many people out on the streets who are of sound mind, how do they propose to ensure they aren't taking a mentally ill person and sending them off to another city or state so they can provide social programs for them? The issue of mental illness among the homeless cannot be ignored.
I may be a fiscal conservative, but I want to see everyone have a roof over their head, food in their bellies and emergent medical care available to them. Self-reliance doesn't work when people aren't capable of caring for themselves. Some of the homeless are definitely able to care for themselves, they've just fallen on hard times. The answer for them is to improve our economy. The homeless I'm concerned about are those who can't provide for their own needs through conventional methods.
The same things goes on right here in Los Angeles County. Cities have been found to have taken homeless from their streets and transported them to L.A.'s Skid Row. Again, out of sight out of mind.
If you let your dog take his "dump" in your neighbor's yard, you may have kept your own yard clean. But it isn't right. Nor is it right to take a problem in your area and handle it by sending it somewhere else.
* * *
Defense "hawks" in Congress and senior officials at the Pentagon are saying that the cuts mandated by sequestration will harm the nation's defense and could lead to dire circumstance in the future. That we might be less "secure" within our borders because of these cuts may be accurate. However, that doesn't mean there isn't room to reduce military spending without reducing the readiness of the U.S. Military.
There is an organization called the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). They've had five rounds of closure recommendations since the late 1980s. The most recent round was in 2005. There were 13 bases scheduled for closure on the commission's initial recommendations. Then the members of Congress and the public whose financial future is tied to those locations were allowed to weigh in. Five of the 13, or more than one third of the facilities that were originally recommended for closure were removed from the list.
Therein lies the problem. Members of the House and Senate who are willing to deal with the reality that as a nation we continue to write checks from an apparently unlimited overdraft account; aren't willing to bring the pain back home to the voters who keep sending them to Washington, D.C.
In Monterey, CA, there is an Army post. The Presidio of Monterey is the last of the California Presidios with an active military installation on it. Currently it is home to the Defense Language Institute's Foreign Language School (DLIFLC). The Defense Language Institute has an English Language School at a base in San Antonio, Texas. This means separate administrative and logistics staffing to support these two schools. Two sets of facilities. If the DLIFLC were to be moved to Joint Base San Antonio, Presidio of Monterey could be shuttered.
Just try and make that happen. Senators Feinstein and Boxer would have an immediate conniption fit. They and the members of the House from California would rise up and smite whoever was trying to take this cash cow out of California. Never mind how much money might be saved by consolidation and realignment. We MUST keep this facility here in CA to preserve military readiness.
Obviously, this is a crock. You can teach languages to military (and other) personnel anywhere. One school. One set of support personnel. The same is true of so many military programs and operations that all of the required spending cuts could be made if the political will to make tough choices existed in our elected leadership. In the minds of the 535 of us who sit in D.C. and decide, as long as they keep bringing home the pork, the voters will send them back to D.C. to raise pigs.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Anyone who bought into Ariel Castro's claims that he's not a monster, but sick with a sexual addiction, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you at a reasonable price.
Should Julian Assange be using the word "alleged" in describing the documents leaked by convicted felon Bradley Manning? No. Julian, he's not a whistleblower, he's a convicted criminal. President Obama didn't promise to protect those who commit espionage and try to disguise it as espionage.
I don't have a problem with a police chief making a profanity laced, tirade video about his right to keep his guns. But I question the intelligence of doing something dumb like that.
A retired doctor was ordered by an appellate court to repay $500,000 in insurance benefits that he'd received from an accident that took the life of his son. The other passengers in the car, all of whom survived, didn't get much from the original trial court and that was overturned on appeal. So was he right or wrong in repaying $150,000 of that amount in bags of loose quarters? The coins weighed four tons.
Could we go for at least a year without Monica Lewinsky trending on Yahoo?
So if A-Roid is suspended for all of this season and next, are the Yankees a better team, or worse off than they are now? I say better.
This Date in History:
30 BC – Octavian (later known as
Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman
Republic.
69 – Batavian rebellion: The
Batavians in Germania Inferior (Netherlands) revolt under the leadership of
Gaius Julius Civilis.
527 – Justinian I becomes the
sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.1192 – Richard the Lionheart
landed on Jaffa and defeated the army of Saladin1291 – The Old Swiss Confederacy is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter.
1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.
1620 – The Speedwell leaves Delfshaven to bring pilgrims to America by way of England.
1664 – The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.
1759 – Seven Years' War: The Battle of Minden, an allied Anglo-German army victory over the French. In Britain this was one of a number of events that constituted the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 and is celebrated as Minden Day by certain British Army regiments.
1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) – Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.
1800 – The Acts of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1801 – First Barbary War: The American schooner USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli in a single-ship action off the coast of modern-day Libya.
1831 – A new London Bridge opens.
1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.
1838 – Non-laborer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1840 – Laborer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1842 – The Lombard Street Riot erupts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
1855 – The first ascent of Monte Rosa, the second highest summit in the Alps.
1876 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
1894 – The First Sino-Japanese War erupts between Japan and China over Korea.
1907 – The start of the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island, the origin of the worldwide Scouting movement.
1914 – Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilizes because of World War I.
1927 – The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
1937 – Josip Broz Tito reads the resolution "Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH" to the constitutive congress of KPH (Croatian Communist Party) in woods near Samobor.
1944 – The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
1957 – The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
1960 – Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France.
1964 – The Belgian Congo is renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo
1966 – Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
1966 – Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
1968 – The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
1974 – Cyprus dispute: The United Nations Security Council authorizes the UNFICYP to create the "Green Line", dividing Cyprus into two zones.
1975 – CSCE Final Act creates the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
1980 – A train crash kills 18 people in County Cork, Ireland.
1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world's first democratically elected female head of state
1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, northwest England
1993 – The Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 comes to a peak
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Claudius, Roman Emperor
Pertinax, Roman Emperor
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Herman Melville
Robert Todd Lincoln
Kinsan Ginsan (Japanese identical twins who both lived to be more than 105 years of age)
Jack Kramer
Lawrence Eagleburger
Dom DeLuise
Teri Shields
Yves Saint Laurent
Ron Brown
Jerry Garcia
Giancarlo Giannini
Andrew G. Vajna
Dennis Zine
Avi Arad
Tom Leykis
Michael Penn
Jesse Borrego
Demian Bechir
Sam Mendes
Tanya Reid
Tempestt Bledsoe
Movie quotes today comes from the underappreciated Mel Brooks film "Spaceballs." The late Dom DeLuise provided the voice of "Pizza the Hutt":
Lone Starr: A million? That's unfair.
Pizza the Hutt: Unfair to payor but not to payee. But you're gonna pay it, or else!
Barf: Or else what?
Pizza the Hutt: Tell him, Vinnie.
Vinnie: Or else pizza is gonna send out for *you*!
#2
Princess Vespa: I am Princess Vespa, daughter of Roland, King of the Druids.
Lone Starr: Oh great. That's all we needed. A Druish princess.
Barf: Funny, she doesn't look Druish.
#3
Lone Starr: I still don't understand how I'm going to lift that big statue with this little ring.
Yogurt: Never underestimate the power of the Schwartz!
#4
Dark Helmet: What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? CHICKEN?
posted by me at 3:49 PM
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