SF homeless issues on NPR in 2 hrs

There is an easy answer to San Francisco's homeless problem.

Have the police pick them up, take them out to the edge of town, drop them off, and tell them sternly, "Don't ever come back."

An even better solution would be to drop them off in Mill Valley with the same admonition. That's because Mill Valley is populated by a bunch of rich liberals. As the saying goes, "A fool and his money are soon parted." Let that happen in Mill Valley.

The movie Our Daily Bread (1934) was a film about
disenfranchised unemployed people forming a collective
at an old farm and pooling their labor for survival.
A compassionate society would be willing to allow fallow
land to be used for self sufficiency with minimal support
from the government. A significant portion of these
people are veterans. We can do better them sweep them
up like trash or jail them. Does this regime have any
compassion?

There's an easy answer to the Republican problem. Pick them up, fly them to one of the Third World sweatshops their policies underwrite, and force them to work an honest 18 hour day. Then we'll see how many of them keep voting for the GOP.

I have a great idea Mike.

Let's bring Newt Gingrich out of retirement and ask him to come up with a "Contract for San Francisco."

That ought to do it re the homeless problem and a whole lot of other problems.

Newt's superior intellect and political experience are just what's needed there.

so is his strong commitment to family values and getting poor people to marry and stay married and changing the culture of entitlement......let's see, how many times has Neut been married? How many of his interns did he have affairs with? He especially liked to do it on his desk, he said once, because that make him feel more powerful. very typical of the Republican commitment to family values....do as I say, not as I do--or who I do--or whether or not they're married when i do them.....

by the way, aren't you supposed to be in Iraq with the Special Forces, torching old ladies with napalm, just like they did in Vietnam? or perhaps you're just another chickenhawk sending the kids off to fight while you sit around jerking off to Internet pornography with one hand and typing paens to the GOP with the other?

Any blame for the homeless problem in SF can only rest squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic Party. They've run the show here for decades Don't expect the homeless problem to change as long as the Democrats are in power.The only thing leftists have to offer are the same things they have offered and which hasn't worked for decades now. Democrats have been without new ideas for so long that for their party, bankruptcy would be a step up. All they do is whine and complain about Republican "extremists" and demagogue about the elderly, race and class. Their religion is big government. The government is their shepherd, they shall not want. Yea, though the afflicted and discriminated against, the angry and ignored walk through the valley of the shadow of poverty, Democrats will be there comforting them with entitlement checks and empathy. Their lives won't improve, but to Democrats, independence and self-sufficiency mean the end of their political power.

<Their religion is big government. The government is their shepherd, they shall not want. >

This from a rep of the party that is trying to build a police state through the Office of Homeland Security; that supports companies like Lockheed and Habu-Cheney's- which essentially live off government subsidies; that subsidizes shopping mall developers through highways and subsidies; once again, for the GOP, it's do as I say, not as I do. All for ourselves, and nothing for other people.

>>trying to build a police state<<

Good. Keep up the rhetoric. This is great. The more you use this type of language the more you isolate yourselves from the public in general. It's people that talk like you who define liberalism. Kooks like Nancy Pelosi are the mainstream of Democrats and liberalism and it's high time that they come out and scream to the world what they believe so everyone can see just how out of touch they are with reality. Please keep it up. I'll be the last to stand in your way.

The 5 year limit since Clinton signed the welfare reform bill that put a 5 year lifetime limit on receiving state aid is coming up very soon - next month I believe? (does anyone know the precise date?)
I wonder what will happen then.
During the great depression, a few conservatives still looked at poor and houseless people as moral failures, but most didn't. During periods of lower unemployment, you hear more voices referring to the jobless as the group that doesn't want to work - essentially the unemployment rate as the laziness rate. To be sure, there are some homeless who are moral failures who have made selfish decisions and have no motivation to kick drug dependency, but what about the larger situation.
When there is a big pool of unemployed, the removal of the safety net will drag down wages, just like having immigration of only people who will compete for low wage jobs will drag down wages at the bottom. Programs for poor single mothers remove them from harsh competition with other low wage earners. This brings down wages for everyone.
When a dot commer with soft skills (i.e. not a programmer) goes out of work, they will continue to apply for middle level jobs. If they are unsuccessful with getting a secretarial position etc. by the time unemployment benefits run out, they will go a step down and apply for a restaurant job. The restaurant owner will select the person with more education or higher class appearance and a more working class waiter or cook will be displaced. The restaurant owner can also start to offer lower wages because more people are competing for his jobs. Next, the waiter or cook will apply for jobs, and might have to break down and work at McDonald's , displacing the recent immigrant or person with bad work history who is there. Then that person becomes homeless or has to go work picking lettuce.

<Good. Keep up the rhetoric. This is great. The more you use this type of language the more you isolate yourselves from the public in general. >

Wrong. Conservative columnist William Safire has a column today in The New York Times attacking the Pentagon for its plans to spy on all U.S. citizens.

Isolating ourselves? I don't think so. Once, only leftists proposed an eight hour day; now it's common sense. Once only leftists called for strong environmental laws; now the public demands them. Once only leftists supported desegregation of the Sourth; now conservatives pretend they never supported it. And once only liberals advocated the expansion of the First Amendment; now even rightists act like they're for it, even as they undermine it.

The U.S. is not a police state; and hopefully never will be. But that's because liberals, leftists, and radicals will (I pray) mobilize against Bush's plans to turn it into one. As Noam Chomskly has pointed out, it's the left-from the anti-slavery movement to the Freedom of Information Act and onward--who have made the United States the freest civil society in the world; and now we will turn our attention to stopping the U.S.'s terrorist atrocities overseas.

You guys agreeing with Wm. Safire. Isn't that convienient!?! I read that already. This isn't the first time he's wandered off the reservation. He probably wanted an exclusive interview with Poindexter some time back and was told to piss off and now he holds a grudge. Get Cal Thomas or Thomas Sowell to agree with him and you got something to sink you teeth into. Otherwise,............

He's agreeing with us. We've been saying this all along.

Safire wandered off the reservation because it's a toxic hellhole of Republican waste. Pat Buchanan fled too. Brent Snowcroft is about to bolt. Kevin Philips is long gone. Edward Luttwak took a powder. The only ones left--the Cal Thomas's and the Thomas Sowell's--are brain damaged freaks wandering through the poison sludge.

Think! Think! Think! Think! Think!

This problem with terrorism is an immigration issue, not one of naturalized citizens. IF they can pull this off, and that's a BIG "IF" because we are talking about the government here, .....what can I say, this just isn't going to happen, not the way he reported it. I don't have any reason at this point to believe the way it is being reported is how it is actually written. But just supposing it is, the American people would never stand for it. We are not going to give up our freedoms that easily and Americans of varing political views would band together and be on the frontlines when it comes to preserving our freedoms. We are not to a point where we believe ourselves to be in so much danger that we want the government to track every citizen because we fear our neighbors are terrorists. And should we ever reach that point, I have no reason to believe we as a nation would allow something like this. The only conceivable way you could devise that they would do something like this is in a clandestine manner, and there's way to many hackers and the like out there who could identify that the Pentagon was tracking their fellow citizens every move and they would alert the general public. Let me put it this way, if it is written in as it is reported, it's a gonner. It won't pass though to become law until that is changed. Too many watchdogs to let that happen. Using this technology to track specific suspects for specific reasons is something I support. Tracking the whole population is not.

Now Mike, you're damn funny when it comes to the conspiracy stuff. That's some of the funniest shit I've ever read on here. Nessie's gonna follow whatever road leads to his predetermined view of things, but I expect more from you. Shape up. :)