On the one hand, the Seattle Times’ editors have long complained about aggressive panhandlers, some of them “mentally deranged,” while explicitly praising candidates from Mark Sidran to Joe Mallahan for taking a tough stance on the issue. Yet how does the Times propose to balance our state budget while raising as little additional revenue as possible…?
The General Assistance-Unemployable program has to go. This program, which provides a temporary safety net for people not working because of physical and mental disabilities, has been on just about every list of proposed cuts year after year. And every year, House Speaker Frank Chopp saves it. He needs to give it up.
Now, I’m not suggesting that all panhandlers are disabled, mentally or otherwise, or even a vast majority (maybe they are, maybe they aren’t… I really don’t know), but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to intuit a correlation between our society’s willingness to take care of the disabled, and the number of beggars on the street. Visit a strong social-welfare state like Denmark and you’ll have a tough time finding yourself a panhandler, whereas they’ve always been part of the urban landscape here in the ruggedly individualistic Northwest, home of the original Skid Row.
I know there are those who feel little obligation to those less fortunate — after all, I didn’t make the choice to become disabled, so why should I pay taxes to take care of those who did? But morality aside, there is a simple utilitarian equation between the strength of our social safety net and the number of beggars and homeless people on the streets. As harsh as it may be to propose to eliminate GAU, while addressing the inevitable social consequences via law enforcement, it is also inefficient, and amounts to little more than a shift of burden from the state budget to the local, while undoubtedly multiplying the cost in human suffering.
But I guess that’s what the Times means when they talk about “compromise.”
To hell with the disabled! Glenn Beck says it’s time to plant your survival garden with non-genetically-modified self-reproducing (and overpriced) World Government/Black Helicopter Proof seeds!! Armageddon is here!!! It’s every man, woman, child, dog, cat, rabbit, and rat for himself! The end is nigh!!!!
http://www.aolnews.com/the-poi.....r/19389694
In other news, another crazy person with a gun and a grievance killed someone today. This time, over a bad work performance review.
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/.....d/19389381
But not to worry! The rightwingers will make sure every lawabiding citizen — and also every nut, paranoiac, criminal, revolutionist, and terrorist — continues to have unfettered access to guns.
http://tinyurl.com/yb2g7j9
Airline To Passengers: Fuck You
Now here’s a business model for you. If your customer service is so rotten it provokes your customers to demand that Congress pass laws against you, the thing to do is, if they don’t like being imprisoned on airplanes for hours, let’s see how they like being stranded in airports for days!
http://www.dailyfinance.com/ar.....45/?cid=10
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The number of airline stocks owned by Roger Rabbit is exactly none. After all, for a stock to go higher, the company has to make more more, and treating your customers like gulag inmates doesn’t seem like a good way of doing that.
Also, I prefer to speculate (I won’t dignify what I do by calling it “investing”) in the stocks of companies run by smart management. Smart idea: When your customer service stinks, improve it. Dumb idea: When it stinks, retaliate against the customers who complained. You get the idea.
The solution to both the aggressive panhandling problem and Continental Airline’s tarmac woes is to bring these two parties together. Continental should hire the panhandlers as public relations consultants. That way, the latter won’t need to panhandle anymore, and the former’s customer service and public relations will be improved at least incrementally. What I’m sayin’ is the airline is so clueless it could learn from aggressive panhandlers, know what I mean? It’s a win-win for everyone, including the customers, for whom aggressive panhandling would be an improvement over the airline’s current business practices.
Here’s an idea for solving the state budget crisis. Since Republicans like the idea of taxes being voluntary, let’s do away with all existing state taxes, and hire all the aggressive panhandlers in downtown Seattle and deploy them in downtown Bellevue, especially staking out the office buildings where anti-tax Republicans work. It’s a win-win-win-win: Seattle gets rid of the panhandlers (and gets even with Bellevue), the panhandlers get steady jobs with health care and pension benefits, the state gets all the money it needs, and nobody has to pay taxes.
I want to personally thank Cynical, Puddy, and the other trolls for making their asses available for our kicking pleasure.
Save the whales!
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/.....e/19389362
If, as the Japanese whalers claim, Japan is only conducting “scientific research” by killing 1,000 whales a year in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary, why does meat from endangered whales up in a Hollywood sushi bar?
I’m gonna send another donation to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In fact, I’d buy Captain Watson a destroyer armed with 5-inch guns, if I had the money. The Japanese commercial whalers are murdering my fellow mammals in violation of international treaties and laws, and the civilized world needs to stop them, even if it takes a war.
http://www.centurychina.com/wi...../uspow.htm
The GAU could probably be replaced with something better, but just killing it would be a bad idea. And like Goldy said, would be at cross purposes with reducing pan handling.
@8 Oh, don’t worry, eliminating GAU will reduce panhandling for pocket change. They’ll turn to armed robbery for basic necessities.
In their simple minded fuckedness, the conservative answer to any and all such questions is to simply pass more punitive laws, hire more police, and build more jails.
As a result, we get higher government expenditures, more judges and attorneys to process these new crimes, more unionized police and jail guards, and more public works construction built at prevailing public works wages and using a lot of union labor, and higher taxes to pay for it all.
Conservatives. Don’tcha’ just love ’em? The incoherence is stuperfying.
Re 6
No ‘trolls.’ Just thought you should know you’ve been talking to yourself.
Re 10
That’s one blindly partisan point of view without any real reference to what conservatives actually believe.
Here’s another point of view. Compassion doesn’t always consist of giving immediate gratification regardless of cost or consequence. Sometimes it consists of temporary assistance with a cut off forcing people to fend for themselves. Sometimes it means tough choices on what government legally can and ought to spend money on. Sometimes it means we look at generational effects of social policy, not the week or month.
I know very little about this specific program. If we’re talking about people who can’t make choices due to mental defect, asking them to make such choices (kick bad habits, clean up, get employed) is not rational. I will say that Italy has a strong social safety net and I saw no shortage of agressive panhandlers there. The reference to Denmark is anecdotal, not informative absent real data about why social phenomena occur. I know you’d get a lot more buy in from me and other conservatives on social programs with performance goals that must be met or department heads asked to explain why. Budgets should be linked to such performance, not an eternal grant at taxpayer expense. I know many government employees don’t realize this, but they do work for the taxpayers and the arrogant assumption that they aren’t accountable to them can be galling.
Liberals, don’t you just love them. Reality can mean whatever the social cause du jour justifies.
@6..what a strange and miserable life you lead.
@11 “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.”
Conservative’s straw-man welfare-state advocate:
“Give him another fish and he’ll eat for another day. Give him thirty fish and he’ll eat for a month. Give him a thousand fish and…”
True progressive:
“Teach a man to fish, and he’ll provide for himself.”
Environmental zealot:
“Don’t let him fish, for heaven’s sake! Don’t let ANYBODY fish. Think of the poor fish!!!! We should all eat mud.”
Conservative:
“If a poor man has a fish, take it away from him. Give that fish to a rich man, who by virtue of his privileged education, his superior standing in society and the characteristic wisdom inherited from his patrician forbears, will put the fish to better use. This will benefit more people in the end….somehow.”
Sportsman:
“Teach a man to fish, and he’ll spend the rest of his days sitting in a boat drinking beer.”
Re 13
And speaking of Straw Men…
@13……I think us sportsmen need to start our own political party – because out of all those choices, only the sportsman makes any sense.
“That’s one blindly partisan point of view without any real reference to what conservatives actually believe.”
As usual, you are being disingenuous and wander off into pointless dissembling. I look at how conservatives vote and the effects of the policies they manage to put into place. Are you actually going to sit at your keyboard and write a denial that the GOP/conservatives have milked “law and order” for all it’s worth since the 60’s? I merely point out how politically successful they have been on this score, and the results are out there for all to see.
The unspoken consequences of the Times sloppy reasoning are clear, and follow in this vein. Yet you chastise others (read liberals)for not “looking at” the “generational effects” of their policies. Pot, meet kettle.
“I know very little about this specific program.”
Really? I would never have guessed.
As for “performance goals” and accountability, I can only note how you coyly limited the vital adoption of these parameters as they may apply to “social programs” (you know, bleeding heart liberal programs)….right out of the standard conservative playbook.
And lastly, the gratuitous slander that government employees casually make “arrogant assumptions” bespeaks a mind that is essentially unserious.
Goldy;
As an east-coast transplant, you can be forgiven for getting the reference slightly wrong.
The original “skid row” was actually named “Skid Road”, because trees logged at the top of the hill were literally rough-cut into logs, and then skidded down the muddy road to Yesler’s sawmill at the base. That road is now named Yesler Way.
Seattle Neighborhoods: Pioneer Square — Thumbnail History
Of course, nobody wanted to live on a road where heavy logs were skidding down the hill and the loggers would actually direct water straight down the street in dryer times, to make it a sea of mud to aid in their transportation problem. So it became the hangout for the poorest of the poor, where nobody bothered them. The term spread to other cities, where it was adopted to local circumstances as “skid row” – perhaps referring to the allusion that like the logs sliding down Yesler, the people who habited this area had slidden down to the bottom of society and had become rather muddy and unattractive in the process.
The mentally ill have always been Americas dirty little secret. Look on the downtown streets at night. You see two (often overlapping) categories. Drug addicts whose addictions have cost them their homes, and the mentally ill. We don’t want to pay to house/medicate the mentally ill, but we don’t want them panhandling and reminding us of this segment we want to just sweep away.
What do you do with a manic depressive, or schizophrenic with no family (or family willing to help). Just telling someone with an actual mental illness to just “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and get a job” doesn’t work…anymore than telling someone with cancer “just stop being sick, you must be lazy and just avoiding work”. These are actual illnesses. If it was a broken arm, or bleeding head, they’d get help. But since it’s a chemical or chromosomal damage in the brain, we do nothing.
Re 16
I’m not and never have claimed to be a lock step Republican. It is the best of 2 bad choices for me, not the ideal of how politics should work. Clinton was in some limited ways a better president than Bush, Obama a much worse. It isn’t the party but the performance, for me. Fundamentally, for me, the test is that established by Kennedy. A president should inspire citizens to do the work, not seek for government to do it for them. In that way Reagan and Kennedy had more in common than Kennedy and Obama.
Republicans found an emotional touch point they thought resonated with voters and stuck to it? Imagine that. A slogan does not a party platform make. No more is the compassion and tolerance Democrats try to use for the same purpose is reflected in their policies. They are all politicians and more or less venal on that account. It’s just a matter of whether you choose the devil or the deep blue sea.
By generational effects I mean that it’s been shown that participants in welfare programs have kids who are participants in welfare programs. No evidence shows that these programs of themselves elevate people out of poverty. No evidence shows that they solve the underlying problems that cause the poverty, assuming that in an imperfect society this quixotic goal is reachable. This has been shown in internal studies done by the agencies responsible for implementation of the programs, and isn’t a right wing red herring. So much for ‘teach a man to fish.’
I’d like to see all government budgets at all levels subject to a performance based review of stated goals established in advance, not just social services. We happened to be speaking about social services, so I used it as an example. Sorry if that seemed hypocritical.
I’m purely sorry if my mind is unserious. I’ll jes go and slop the hogs now, y’all.
@10 They kept me in business long enough to collect a state pension.
@11 “Sometimes it means tough choices on what government legally can and ought to spend money on.”
Government can legally spend money on almost anything. The “ought” part is a value judgment, not a legal question.
@15 Yeah, just what this country needs, a political party for rabbit hunters and Bambi killers!
[farting noises]
16, 19 — I don’t think Lost is a lockstep Republican in his thinking, although I’ll bet he is at the ballot box. I can’t visualize him ever voting for a Democrat.
Lost, you call politicians venal, but we (collectively speaking) elect them. Unlike in many countries, they didn’t acquire office with the point of a bayonet. They reflect what a majority of the voters in their districts want. And you are a fool if you think rigid adherence to any ideology can solve society’s pragmatic problems.
“And you are a fool if you think rigid adherence to any ideology can solve society’s pragmatic problems.”
Agreed without reservation. All systems of thought (that we know of empirically) are humanly fallible. All will have flaws, which is why opposing points of view can be very useful. That is, when folks listen to each other rather than speaking over each other.
I had a very liberal friend with whom I’ve unfortunately lost touch. He measured any philosophical system by how it improved the lives of people. He saw this more short term than I, but on the fundamental value system we agreed. We could discuss politics like 2 sincere and well meaning individuals who happened to disagree. It’s that conversation not happening where it counts, at the government level, just now.
@19 “By generational effects I mean that it’s been shown that participants in welfare programs have kids who are participants in welfare programs.”
I’m going to refute this vicious stereotype right now with a real-life story. As a lawyer, I get the bar association’s monthly magazine, The Bar News. This month, our association’s president, Salvador A. Mungia, wrote an article about a young woman named Carla Lee. She’s a real person, and that’s her real name; you can look her up in the WSBA’s online lawyer directory.
Carla Lee is black. She was born to a 15-year-old mother. Her father died before she was born. Carla herself became a mother at age 13.
Mungia wrote,
“[T]the story she was told was that [her father] was ill and local Seattle hospitals refused to treat a young black man until he got to Harborview — and then it was too late.
“This led to a lot of questions when she was young. Why don’t I have a dad? Why are we poor? Why don’t I have what other kids have? Why do the other kids treat me differently? … She just couldn’t comprehend how human beings could treat other human beings that way. …
“She asked her favorite uncle these questions, and more. He couldn’t answer her questions. He did, however, tell her that she needed to go to college. She should become either a member of Congress or a lawyer. They could change things — they could help other people.”
Carla Lee — “Female, black, poor, and a thirteen-year-old mother — was determined,” Mungia wrote. She attended an alternative school and got her high school diploma. But then, “she came to the fork so many before her had faced: follow her dreams and risk her child’s welfare or give up those dreams to devote her life to her child’s success. Tameka came first. … She did promise herself that when Tameka went to college, she would go with her.” That day came: “Eleven years later, both mother and daughter went to the UW together.”
But Carla wasn’t done yet, although she still faced obstacles. She had good grades, but her applications to the University of Washington and Seattle University law schools were denied down because her LSAT scores were a little too low. Her story doesn’t end there, though. Mungia says, “She went back to school and got a second degree, hoping that addition would get her accepted. She applied again.”
He continues: “She was in the shower when the mail came. … She said she wasn’t going to get out of the shower — she was too scared that it was a rejection letter. … Horace opened the letter and told her — ‘acceptance.’ Normally as calm as a cavern pool, she screamed. Then she cried the tears of a little girl …. Carla Lee graduated from Seattle University School of Law and joined the Washington State Bar in 2006.”
Since then, Carla, who now sits on the bar association’s governing board, “has shared her story with others — many of whom are young women and men who no doubt have gained courage, determination, and hope from hearing her tell her story.”
You can read the entire, uncondensed, article here:
http://www.wsba.org/media/publ.....uegrit.htm
Roger Rabbit Commentary: First of all, I’m incredibly proud to have Carla Lee in our bar association. Many of us became lawyers because we believe in justice, and don’t accept the world as it is, and saw the law as a path to changing it. There’s nothing wrong with fixing up old houses for a living, but those people don’t change the world. Occasionally, a lawyer does.
During its existence, the Aid For Dependent Children (AFDC) program never got more than 3% of the federal budget, yet it provided basic subsistence (food, shelter, and clothing) for millions of children who were deprived of parental support due to death, abandonment, disability, or unemployment. These children were of all races, but the large majority were white. All were victims of misfortune not of their own making or choosing.
The claims, often made by conservatives through the years, about “career” welfare recipients and multigenerational welfare families were mostly a myth. Federal statistics showed the average AFDC recipient was on the program for 15 months and never returned. For most, their time on welfare coincided with a crisis in their lives; they had been productive citizens previously, and returned to the workforce.
Mungia’s narrative doesn’t tell us whether Carla Lee’s mother was on welfare, or whether Carla herself was. That’s not really relevant. It’s simply wrong to stereotype the poor, or assume they’re poor because something is wrong with them. While Carla’s story is unusual, it’s not unique. I knew an assistant attorney general who bootstrapped herself up from AFDC. And, of course, it’s well known that Christine Gregoire was raised by a single mother and was a DSHS caseworker before she went to law school.
People who fix old houses generally don’t change the world. Sometimes a lawyer does. Carla Lee is still young and it’s too soon to say what her career will be. But it’s not going to be a life spent on welfare. AFDC is gone, she and her daughter are both college graduates, she’s on her way in a legal career, and frankly I hope we see her in elective office someday — whether as a Republican or a Democrat.
Of course, for every bootstrap-success story like hers, there are dozens of people who never made it out of the ghetto. Some people are stronger than others. The strong have always had an obligation to help the weak. That’s what makes us a community instead of a herd of wild animals living our lives individually. It’s sad that some among us can’t see that, but we must forge ahead anyway.
@24 “It’s that conversation not happening where it counts, at the government level, just now.”
Some journalists have recently made this point. For example, I read an article (I don’t remember where, so I can’t link it) that said both parties profit from noncooperation, so there’s no incentive for bipartisanship. How do we fix this?
At the grassroots level, a group of Democratic-leaning activists have started the “Coffee Party” to bring people together for policy discussions. They will be meeting at various locations across the country (including Seattle) this Saturday. These discussion groups are open to people of all persuasions and viewpoints.
I don’t think this, by itself, will change the behavior of politicians. They are, after all, behaving rationally in risk-reward terms. But there is much evidence that most Americans are tired of polarization and want constructive action from our leaders. Grassroots engagement could eventually change the calculus.
It’s not hypocritical to talk about this in these threads. HA is a verbal saloon brawl in which willing participants pull no punches. Everyone here understands that’s the game we’re playing, or quickly finds out. But this blog is also full of serious people who have the ability to shift from this role-playing into serious discussions. And no one wants that to happen more than many of us here. This may not be the forum where it happens. But it can happen if enough people want it to.
See you Saturday.
For the first few years of this millenium, I worked for a now-extinct digitial imaging and printing outfit in South Lake Union. I’d generally take the bus downtown, get off on Stewart St. and walk to work from there. This would take me right past the “Urban Rest Stop”. We had made the acquainance of Sharon and Tony Lee, who started the place–their son and ours were in Boy Scouts together. So I’d take my time going past there, and sometimes stop to talk with the clientelle. A rather large percentage of those were grizzled ‘Nam vets, many of whom were significantly disabled, physically, psychologically or both. Right after 9/11, I heard guys in wheelchairs talking about how if they could still walk, they’d march down to the recruiting office and try to lie about their ages and sign up again–as if these men hadn’t given us enough already, for Chrissakes.
There was another group, in their 20’s or early 30’s, most of them well groomed and dressed–pressed khakis, leather bomber jackets, nice shoes–but all with a sort of stunned “deer-in-the-headlights” look. Sharon told me some of these folks had worked at dot-coms that went under, played as hard as they’d worked, and couldn’t pay their debts when the options they were counting on evaporated. Others were hospitality workers–waiters, cooks, bartenders, bellmen–who worked downtown but themselves were living in their cars or walkups with bathrooms down the hall. That was when times were generally better and rents were lower. I doubt if many of those guys are better off now.
A lot of people occasionally read Tim Harris’s editorials in Real Change and think he’s exaggerating when he writes about the shitty way the underclasses are treated in America in general, and particularly in supposedly “liberal” Seattle. Actually, Tim’s pretty much pulling his punches.
Lostisms:
“By generational effects I mean….”
Well, the Rabbit chewed that conservative cannard up and spit it out. And if you actually looked into the effects of LBJ’s Great Society programs, you will find they did quite a bit to alleviate poverty in this, the richest nation on the planet (yes! studies!!!)
“It’s that conversation not happening….”
It’s difficult to have a conversation with someone who casually calls FDR a traitor, and denigrates Obama in the strongest terms for, what, exactly, I am not sure. Perhaps you could provide a list. Surely it cannot be too long, he’s only been in office a year. I criticize Obama also, but his positions are fairly consistent with his campaign statements, and to me he is way too conservative/centerist in his policies. His foreign policy is more of the same old same old America uber alles, but with a softer veneer. His record on rolling back the Bush civil liberties outrages is, well, an outrage. He believes in some misnomer called “clean coal”. There is more. Anybody who is suprised now was not paying attention prior to the election.
“I’ll jes go and slop the hogs now, y’all.”
There you go again.
Re 28
“Well, the Rabbit chewed that conservative cannard up and spit it out.”
With all due respect to the inspiring story Rabbit told, one person isn’t a study or a trend. Children do learn from their parents, and studies have been done demonstrating the opposite of what you claim. But let that go. I would never say a child need go hungry because of parental choices.
I will avoid this devolving into a referendum on your president. I don’t see what you do in regard to his consistency or integrity. I respected Ted Kennedy for a lifetimes’ consistent championing of issues with which I largely disagreed. He was honest, consistent and the best evidence is that he worked largely against his own interests and those of his family. Obama isn’t even in it with him.
I will say that if you see consistency or integrity in Obama, I simply don’t see how.
FDR fundamentally changed this country and what people expect of their government. He did it in a way inconsistent with the principles on which the nation was founded. So yes, he was a traitor. But if it makes you feel better I’ll apologize for that and simply say he was the worst president we’ve ever had or are likely to have, followed closely by LBJ. Mediocrities like Bush and all the presidents whose names no one remembers outside Trivial Pursuit games didn’t have the charisma or power to damage the country. Those two did.
I’m taking my wife out to dinner, so will wish you all a good evening.
Sorry, Kennedy was honest with regard to his career. I don’t know anything about his personal or business life, and care less. His behavior as a Senator, absent criminal behavior, is all that need concern outside observers like me.
@29 “FDR fundamentally changed this country and what people expect of their government. He did it in a way inconsistent with the principles on which the nation was founded. So yes, he was a traitor.”
FDR saw, in a way you do not, that America and its people’s needs had changed. We weren’t a horse-and-buggy agrarian nation anymore. History does not stand still and neither can our leaders. FDR successfully led our nation through two existential crises, and for this you call him a “traitor.” What the hell is wrong with you?
@ 29 FDR also had an opportunity to become a dictator and would have received support from some of this countries wealthiest people if he had. He turned it down.
Sludge Puppy is also so much of a free market pup that he thinks the schools should be sold but he also knows that what the government has done to the military men and women in this country is crime and far too many of them are on the street. It is time to stop punishing the victims.
GAU funds are keeping my brain-cancer stricken mother in cancer treatment and off the street. When her cancer was finally diagnosed, she could no longer work (60 years young and had been a FT worker for 40+ years). These DSHS funds – that she voted for and paid into over the years – are a small stopgap help for the disabled. They do exactly what they are supposed to: help people with no income to go from ‘suddenly & surprisingly disabled’ to SSI’s ‘federal disability benefits’.
The funds are temporary, hard for legit people to qualify for, and an IDEAL solution for a very real problem: not everyone’s got 10K in the bank to cover them in case they suddenly are kicked to the curb by an uncontrollable accident or illness.
Panhandlers aren’t the problem. Ball-less politicians and shy spinless seattlites might be. Be assertive, FFS, when you don’t want to give change and just say ‘I’m strapped, sorry’.
Criminals like “Addicts Who Beg” (entirely different from non-criminals like ‘homeless panhandlers’ and ‘street buskers’) are certainly a problem. But GAU helps. Not as well as the Orion center, but it does its job.
I keep looking at the old lady panhandling in fornt of the bank in a new light now. Thank god for Frank Chopp if he’s the only thing holding this program in place.