A long overdue step
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has shown a bit of humanity and common decency that the United States has been lacking.
The cities of Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Orange and the County of Orange must appear in court next week to prove that their anti-camping ordinances are not being used to criminalize the homeless camped along the Santa Ana River trail, according to a federal judge.
"The court is concerned that persons who leave or are evicted from the riverbed may subsequently be cited by defendant cities under those cities' anti-camping or anti-loitering laws, even though those persons may not be able to find a shelter or other place to sleep," Carter wrote in his request, released Sunday.
Now there's an idea. Let's not criminalize being poor.
Normally this is how we treat the homeless.
During a so-called abatement three days before Christmas, city workers clearing a street near Petco Park placed a tent filled with bedding and other material into the back of a city garbage truck.
Moments before workers were about to activate the truck's hydraulic compactor, a person began screaming and waving their arms from inside the heap of material, the Union-Tribune reported on Jan. 27.
I really do hope Carter's ruling can/will be expanded across the country, because criminalizing homelessness is exactly what cities are doing.
City-wide bans on public camping (PDF) have increased by 69 percent throughout the United States. What used to be seen as an annoyance is now prohibited, forcing fines or jail time on those who certainly can’t afford it. The only nationwide nonprofit devoted to studying this, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, has been tracking these changes since 2006. Their findings? There are a scary number of laws passed that ironically make it costly to be
For example, in 33 of the 100 U.S. cities they studied, it’s illegal to publicly camp. In 18, it’s illegal to sleep in public. Panhandling is illegal in 27 cities.
In 39 cities, it’s illegal to live in vehicles. For extreme sports junkies (like Yosemite climbers who try to live in their cars), this is an inconvenience. For the homeless, it leaves no alternatives, especially if shelters are too far, too full, or too violent (a common problem). For some people, the choice might be between living in a car or sleeping outside—but what if both are criminalized?
In a related note, consumer spending hit a 6-year high, but to do that people had to draw down on their savings, which hit a 13-year low.
According to Bankrate's latest financial security index survey, 34 percent of American households experienced a major unexpected expense over the past year. However, only 39 percent of survey respondents said they would be able to cover a $1,000 setback using their savings.
"While tapping savings to pay off an emergency was the most common response, more than a third of Americans would sink into one type of debt or another, potentially harming their financial security," Bankrate says in the report.
Nearly a quarter of adults have more credit card debt than savings.
This lack of savings translates directly into people putting daily expenses on their credit cards at an unsustainable rate.
The average American has a credit card balance of $6,375, up nearly 3 percent from last year, according to Experian's annual study on the state of credit and debt in America. Total credit card debt has reached its highest point ever, surpassing $1 trillion in 2017, according to a separate report by the Federal Reserve.
This is America after a 9-year long expansion.
What happens during the next downturn, when no one has emergency savings to fall back on?
Comments
I Am Dumbfounded
Astounded and delighted as well. A shout out from the article to The O.C. Catholic Worker, known as The Isaiah House:
http://www.occatholicworker.org
And here's the L.A. Catholic Worker, aka The Hippie Kitchen:
http://lacatholicworker.org
Scroll down to links from their monthly paper, The Agitator, that include this Howard Zinn interview with a short excerpt:
http://lacatholicworker.org/2018/01/28/howard-zinn-on-civil-disobedience
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
What happens?
Because they can't pay their rent anymore, when they have used up all their savings (if they had any to being with) and the credit card payments are too high to have enough left for rent, they get angry and frustrated, lose their jobs, lose their shelter, sleep in their cars, get arrested, go to prison, start to hate, can't control their hate and end up losing their sanity. Whereever they throw their citizens with with lost minds and real mental issues then, I don't know. Dump them in the forests where nobody can see them? Yep, yep, German TV camera teams filmed those too in the woods.
That's what's going on. I have never seen a country that idiotic of how they try to solve the problems of their poor citizens. Cruel, stupid, costly, inefficient. You go, US of
Now you get all upset because a 'bloody German' is saying that about your own country, the US, right? Damn right.
Sorry, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, it just would be a nice thing if not that many USians would hurt the feelings of poor people anywhere in the world, including their own. There is no shame to deny dignity to your fellow man around here (not C99p, here, as in the US in general), at least it looks like it to some outsiders.
End of my ranting mouth bubbling out hate.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Truth may hurt
But it needs to be said.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
he is the one who makes it most clear to me
[video:https://youtu.be/vfKo36w5eWw]
[video:https://youtu.be/rORwPWvHGf8]
I think it's very worthwhile to listen and think about what he describes over and over again. There are nuggets in it which to me are very important to realize.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Great thanks mimi
factual and inescapable and dark --
and here we are in it only a little less blind.
Slightly OT
Crushing
Like the black sanitation workers who were crushed. I am appalled. How literal can you get -- the absolute disregard for the worth of a human life. The contrast with the vampires on top of the heap...bone spurs...life is _so_ hard, with "personal vietnams".
I take that back, vampire is too good a word for them. Ghouls, subsisting on the flesh of people.
subsiding on the flesh of people
-- Alferd Packer
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Classes
in cannibalism, even.
In the WWII siege of Leningrad, the city recognized two classes of cannibal: those who scavenged from the dead, and predators who took living prey. The Donners were not predators, unlike those in suits.
predators
Likewise Mr. Packer, Colorado's sole cannibal.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Yes, and Mr Packer
I had to read up on him. Quite a story.
Just to clarify
that $6375 figure, is that for all Americans or Americans with a credit card or Americans with a balance?
When I was working I used to cite a similar figure and the person I was talking to always said, "Well I pay my credit card bill every month!" as if they were offended that I would suggest that they were one of those people. Since this was San Francisco I suspected there was a lot of denial.
On to Biden since 1973
No one noticed how heavy that tent was?
I can believe it because the people who clean up homeless camps take pleasure in throwing the less fortunate's last possessions in the garbage trucks. Who can be that heartless? If it has to happen then give people a warning to get their stuff together and then move on. Beyond that it should be treated as a crime and punishable.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Sanitation workers are strong
Many years ago I lived in a group house where we replaced our stove. Four of us scrawny hippies managed to lug it out to the curb for the annual appliance recycling pickup. Except that we brought it out a day early, which happened to be real garbage day. I was one of the guys who witnessed two laughing, burly Portuguese sanitation engineers just picking the damn thing up and tossing it into the back of an ordinary garbage truck.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Snoop the answer to
is that these people need their jobs so they have to follow what the cops and their bosses tell them to do. I have lived this with my Husband. He is a seasonal temporary work in our little City in NE WI. There are homeless here and in the summer the shelters close down. So some people pitch tents or take up in wooded areas in Parks. The first time he had to clear this stuff out of a Park he was very upset about it as there was clearly kids clothing inside the tent. When I got home from work we went and sat at the Park to see if anybody came around looking at the spot where it was so we could maybe try and help them.
He asked if the stuff could just be placed in a lost and found in the event the people came looking for it but was told no, had to be trashed.
I can't speak for the people who order this shit to be done but I believe that the people who have to carry out the orders feel bad about it.
So why does he stay at this job? Because we expect the Pension Fund we are both in to go bust in five years so we are squirreling away money to try and be able to keep him semi-retired and maybe me have a shot at retiring.
It all is a vicious circle for working people and the poor.
O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.
And Charity itself is criminalized
in the cities and towns across "christian" America. Go to jail for giving food away to the hungry.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
As is feeding the homeless
In what world does this make sense? A world that places more on money and power than people.
It's unfortunate that so many people have turned a blind eye to the assaults on our civil rights and think that the police can do no wrong. The increasing police brutality against anyone getting in the way of profits is going to continue to get much worse. We saw the arrest of 200 people at the Trump inauguration where they were charged with felony rioting and possible prison sentences up to 80 years. Even people who were just walking bye were arrested and thrown in with the protesters who were then treated inhumanly by the cops.
Another thing we're seeing is cops letting right and left groups fight unhindered for over an hour before moving in and breaking them up. How many people in the right wing groups were police provocateurs? Have a few of them start the violence so that the police can add more charges against people?
This isn't just happening here in the good ole USA, read this article on how the police unconstitutionally clamped down on the G20 protesters. Even after Germany's Supreme Court said that people had a right to protest, the police and their goon squads broke them up and withheld people's civil rights.
This is coming to our country as well as European ones. The PTB are instituting austerity across the globe and they are training their enforcers.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Not only Germany but France and UK?
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Both France and the U.K. are implementing austerity
Macron has dissolved labor's right to strike as well as other austerity measures and the U.K. has been under funding its medical system and other programs. This is a global economic assault and the enforcers are acting like they're in training for massive civil unrest. This was in the article.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
@snoopydawg
Edit: this did post on View, half-finished and with two direction symbols as well? This one can be deleted, please and thank you, lol.
I haz a fantasy that we may be able to turn this around, or at least fight it better, in Canada, if this new Canadian NDP leader is as good as he sounds here, (the NDP would have won last time if the NDP 'leader' at the time hadn't been considering dropping socialism from the democratic socialist platform after meeting with Harper's US religious right political buddies, so this could simply be BS tactics) and he does at least sound like an actual NDP-er such as we haven't had for quite some time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1LUUnzoIOs
The thing is that nobody can actually claim any 'right' to agree to dispose of the rights, health, lives, futures and countries of others. Elected/appointed public officials at any level do not own the people and country for the good of whom/which said people are paying them to work.
They cannot grant permissions to some to control, abuse, sicken or kill the less powerful of their fellow-citizens and their environment, to be 'above the law' in their country, for any reason, or to give hostile, self-interested outsiders legislative control of their people, country, government to suit their own destructive purposes for profit or for any reason or by any mechanism, such as terming it 'trade law' rather than an abject betrayal in disposing of what was never, and can never be, theirs to dispose of.
I expect we'll have something like the strategic vote which was organized for the last Federal election for next years Fed election, only this time both to keep out the Cons and clear out the Liberals, I would hope.
Even if the Green Party, the only other actual, non-corporate and publicly known alternative, (Elizabeth May already being smeared as bad tempered and rude by, I suspect, whichever/both corrupt, corporate-serving/warmongering/liar/cheat/bully/fascist party/parties, even if the Liberals seem to some to be more plausible and are less abusively authoritarian and in a far more gentle, polite and deceptive form, while still manipulating and selling us out to hostile self-interests - but this smear indicating that that's all they've got to plausibly use against Ms. Liz May, lol,) the Greens, having sacrificed themselves in the strategic vote to get the Cons out, becoming rather shrunken as a result.
Plus, Koch-sucking Harper brought in US-style electoral cheating aid of all sorts, which we'd never had to deal with before and I (obviously) don't trust the Liberals either.
But there's supposed to be some sort of upcoming meeting between the NDP, Bernie and Corbyn representatives, which will presumably be videoed, if not televised, (I don't watch TV) and that exchange might well be revealing.
The point is, if enough voters within a country can unify behind decent, if imperfect, candidates, even a certain level of electoral cheating can be overcome, (the cheaters just have to know that the people will not stand for or blindly accept suspicious results as 'legitimate',) which is admittedly much harder to attempt in such an extremely and callously lawless environment as the US system has become. And preparations for strategic voting have to be started in good time, ideally online, as was our previous nation-wide strategic vote - but now on an internet subject to increasing levels of censorship, so that the sooner the idea/organization behind it can begin to introduce the concept to the general public, the better, as there may not be much opportunity soon.
The fight for democracy needs to be multi-level, but every corporate vampire that can be replaced with a Progressive is one for our human side, and a step closer to potential long-term human and life support system survival. The Earth is dying as we speak, and its murderers need to be stopped before the process becomes immediately irreversable, even apart from the high danger they're creating of Mutual Assured destruction.
In a two-party system, successfully voting in other parties won't work well, if at all, until a government can be brought in which believes in democracy, is genuinely working toward the public good and therefore willing to bring in a Fair Voting system both on principle and because they are also confident that the good they'll consistently be doing will earn them future wins regardless of however many other parties may also have a fair chance, all else being equal, of election.
Other sane, suitable political parties must still be supported and built up, of course, but any human, non-corporate/non-psychopathic individuals believing in democracy and government serving the public good which can be put into office makes a dual advance for humanity, both in his/her presence in public office and the absence of yet another psychopath being added/retained where they can do the most harm - in public office, abusing the powers of that public office, their country and fellow-citizens for personal goals.
In any event, that's where I'm placing my hope for, although the foreign psychopathic corporate multi-millionaire/billionaire interests causing much/most of the problems here and elsewhere around the world actually need to be dealt with in their nation of origin, where they were permitted to drain enough wealth, health and power from the rest to gain the power to purchase/control/overthrow the governments of others, starting with their own, just as they did previously in Germany, in the previous attempt of US industrialists at exerting fascism's death-grip over the globe.
Somebody previously posted here this wonderful, link-packed resource, which I'm still reading thorough:
one link from which leads to here:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-you-should-definitely-keep-talkin...
We've got to fight them right out of policy and the political system, so we no longer have to fight them everywhere on every policy, only to wind up either physically fighting them and our own military/civil forces in our own streets or being obliterated, one way or another, along with the rest of the life support system of Earth, possibly at any moment.
For humanity, achieving a humane and sustainable social democracy in especially the industrialized and militarized countries is an immediate matter of life or death for all.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@snoopydawg
Odd, I have 'Your comment has been posted' on top of my preview? I hope not, still on my first coffee and can't see straight yet, lol.
I haz a fantasy that we may be able to turn this around, or at least fight it better, in Canada, if this new Canadian NDP leader is as good as he sounds here, (the NDP would have won last time if the NDP 'leader' at the time hadn't been considering dropping socialism from their democratic socialist platform after meeting with Harper's invited-in US 'religious right' (Dominionist) political buddies, so this could simply be more BS tactics) and he does at least sound like an actual NDP-er such as we haven't had for quite some time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1LUUnzoIOs
The thing is that nobody can actually claim any 'right' to agree to dispose of the rights, health, lives, futures and countries of others. Elected/appointed public officials at any level do not own the people and country for the intertwined good of whom/which said people are paying them to work.
They cannot grant permissions to some to control, abuse, sicken or kill the less powerful of their fellow-citizens and their environment, to drain and impoverish the public via profit-seeking lawsuits - to privately 'agree' between the corrupt factions involved to even entirely offshore the public's domestic law (the legislative ability of The People/country in perpetuity and merely delegated to an administrative public office to act on their behalf, not surrendered to the personal control of any individual would-be tyrants unfortunately cheated in/happening to occur among those transitorily holding public offices) to absolute control by self-interests in outside corporate/billionaire 'law courts' where the public good is not a factor - to enable powerful self-interests to freely impede/eliminate public choice and to inflict harm/prematurely kill where and how they choose, to be 'above the law' in their fellow-citizen's country, for any reason, to illicitly give hostile, self-interested outsiders legislative control over their fellow-citizens, country, government in order to 'allow' them to do with and to the people, environment and country as they please, to suit their own destructive purposes for profit, or for any reason or by any thought-plausible mechanism, such as terming each traitorous act 'trade deals' or 'trade law' rather than another abject betrayal in disposing of what was never, and can never be, theirs to dispose of.
Nor can anyone claim extra and politically-controlling 'rights for corporations' on the grounds that they are formed of people already having the same rights as everyone else.
In Canada, I hope that we'll have something like the strategic vote which was organized for the last Federal election for next year's Fed election, only this time both to keep out the Cons and clear out the corrupt Liberals. The effects of anticipated electoral cheating (for which Harper created a gag 'law' preventing Elections Canada from informing the public about, prior to the last election, where place-holder Liberals won over the pathetically deteriorated but still somewhat less utterly top to bottom callously corrupted NDP and my province somehow landed up with Cons,) must be nullified by too obvious a landslide to conceal or edge around.
Even if the Green Party, the only (possibly 'other' now, depending,) actual, non-corporate/millionaire/billionaire-serving and publicly known alternative, (Elizabeth May already being smeared as bad tempered and rude by, I suspect, whichever/both corrupt, corporate-serving/warmongering/liar/cheat/bully/fascist party/parties, even if the Liberals seem to some to be more plausible and are less abusively authoritarian and in a far more gentle, polite and deceptive form, while still manipulating and selling us out to hostile self-interests - but this smear attempt indicating that that's all they've got to plausibly use against Ms. Liz May; not that such behaviour, if true, is acceptable, but that theirs is deadly) the Greens, having sacrificed themselves in the strategic vote to get the Cons out, becoming rather shrunken as a result.
Plus, Koch-sucking Harper brought in US-style electoral cheating aid of all sorts, which we'd never had to deal with before and I (obviously) don't trust the Liberals either.
But there's supposed to be some sort of upcoming meeting between the NDP, Bernie and Corbyn representatives, which will presumably be videoed, if not televised, (I don't watch TV) and that exchange might well be revealing.
The point is, if enough voters within a country can unify behind decent, if imperfect, candidates, even a certain level of electoral cheating can be overcome, (the cheaters just have to know that the people will not stand for or blindly accept suspicious results as 'legitimate',) which is admittedly much harder to even attempt in such an extremely and callously lawless environment as the US system has become. As well, preparations for nation-wide strategic voting have to be started in good time, ideally online, as was our previous nation-wide strategic vote - but which now must be conducted on an internet subjected to rapidly increasing levels of censorship, so that the sooner the organization behind it can begin to introduce the concept to the general public, the better, as there may not be much opportunity soon.
The fight for democracy needs to be multi-level, but every corporate vampire that can be replaced with a Progressive is one for our human side, and a step closer to potential long-term human and life support system survival. The Earth is dying as we speak, and its murderers need to be stopped before the process becomes immediately irreversible, even apart from the high hazard they're creating of Mutual Assured Destruction possible at any moment.
In a rigged two-party system, successfully voting (even if counted accurately) other parties into office obviously won't work well, if at all, until a government can be brought in which believes in democracy, is genuinely working toward the public good and therefore willing to bring in a Fair Voting system both on principle and because they are also confident that the good they'll consistently be doing will earn them future wins regardless of however many other parties may also have a fair chance, all else being equal, of election.
Other sane, suitable political parties must still be supported and built up, of course, but any human, non-corporate/non-psychopathic individuals believing in democracy and government serving the public good who can be put into office makes a dual advance for humanity, both in his/her positive presence in public office and the absence of yet another psychopath/enabler being added/retained where they can do the most harm - in public office, abusing the powers of that public office, their country and fellow-citizens for self-interested goals.
Legitimate political parties would be competing to best serve the public good, not competing for self-interested and authoritarian donors, to do the most public harm they feel they can currently get away with for those illicit paymasters wishing to destroy the very concept of democracy.
Democracy does not consist merely of voting, per se; it's about the country being run of, by and for the people who inhabit it, with none 'more equal than others' and none 'above' the public-protective law. Which includes such as the freedom of choice, where not unduly restricting the universally equal rights of others, all of this being offensive to those PTB who would micromanage our lives and deaths to best suit their own monopolistic preferences for their own personal absolute power, enrichment and exerted control.
In any event, that's pretty much where I'm placing my hope, although the psychopathic corporate multi-millionaire/billionaire interests causing much/most of the problems here and elsewhere around the world actually need to be dealt with in their nations of origin, where they were permitted over many decades to drain enough wealth, health and power from the rest to gain the ability to purchase/control/overthrow the governments of others, starting with their own, just as was done previously in Germany, in that previous attempt of US industrialists at exerting fascism's death-grip over the globe.
Somebody previously posted here this wonderful, link-packed resource, which I'm still reading thorough:
https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/the-russiagate-hoax-the-dirty-dossier-d...
one link from which leads to the essential resource of Caitlin:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-you-should-definitely-keep-talkin...
We've got to push them right out of our policies and political systems, replacing them with we, the people of our respective countries, so we no longer have to fight them everywhere on every policy, only to ultimately wind up either physically fighting them and our own military/civil forces in our own streets or being more incidentally obliterated, one way or another, in the pursuit for maximized profits and totalitarian power for the relative few, along with the rest of the life support system of Earth, possibly at any moment.
For humanity, achieving a humane and sustainable social democracy in especially the industrialized and militarized countries being used by The Psychopaths and Parasites That Be is an immediate matter of life or death for all. And there's no time like the present, which could be all that remains to us, at this point.
Dunno if the thread's still visible, been having another restless, cooped-up, too-cold-to-go-out nose-poking puppy-dog day, lol, and am posting as is.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
1920's Germany
"Another thing we're seeing is cops letting right and left groups fight unhindered"
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Already here. n/t
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Yep
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.