Ain’t Technology Great!

Don’t you just love technology. They now have parking meters that alert Meter Maids the INSTANT the meter expires, so he/she can rush to get you ticketed.

Just wonderful!

It’s Getting Cool; Time to Break Out the Homeless Newspaper/TV Files

Predictably, this is the Season of the Homeless, and every year the newspapers and TV are filled with the subject, and every year I have published my solution to the homeless problem, which I’ll probably do once again this year.

But first I want to cover the California history, because there will be partisan sniping, blaming the homeless on Governor Reagan, and it is certainly true that the institutions were closed in his era — what the liberals will not tell you is that they were closed as a direct result of liberl courts ordering them closed and the mentally ill released.

I went to two great liberal sources — one an academic study of the California homeless problem by the University of California at Berkeley and another the liberal  PBS Frontline series.

PERHAPS homelessness was the result of Reagan’s thrifty budget policies does not reflect my memory of the 1981 situation, nor does it comport with the available non-political literature…so hopefully I can set those who believe in Old-Wives Takes to rest.

 

“Homeless in America, Homeless in California” study (http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/QRS_REStat01PB.pdf) mentions on page 1 (Introduction), “THE visibility of street beggars and those sleeping in

public places increased substantially about two decades

ago, and the homeless became a substantive political issue

at approximately the time of the inauguration of Ronald

Reagan in 1981.”

There is nowhere in the study any correlation with budget cuts that explains the increased homelessness. In fact, the above is the only reference to Reagan in the study.

Indeed the fault is placed on the effort to “deinstitutionalize” along with increased use of crack cocaine, and housing prices…but primarily the nationwide effort to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill, a movement that preceded Reagan by two decades. (See below.)

Now the movement to deinstitutionalize, as I recall was driven by liberals claiming that those institutionalized for mental illness, public drunkenness and substance abuse were institutionalized against their will, and as citizens this was a violation of their rights. That policy gained increased support and it was deemed a human right for the institutionalized to be released – but the premise was that localities would increase their support to offset the lack of state institutions. (Local entities never took up the slack.)

It would be an error to attribute deinstitutionalizing to Reagan or his policies.

From the PBS Frontline Special “Deinstitutionalization began in 1955 with the widespread introduction of chlorpromazine, commonly known as Thorazine,…The magnitude of deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill qualifies it as one of the largest social experiments in American history. In 1955, there were 558,239 severely mentally ill patients in the nation’s public psychiatric hospitals. In 1994, this number had been reduced by 486,620 patients, to 71,619, as seen in Figure 1.2.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html

(PBS Frontline Show: The New Asylums; chapter “Deinstutionalizing: A Psychiatric “Titanic”’)

In brief, if a Berkeley study, and  PBS special do not attribute the homeless problem to Reagan budget cuts, perhaps the insinuation by liberals is more political polemic than a substantive analysis.

Not a Bad Day, Overall.

The NPR kerfuffle with Juan Williams is more that just a demonstration of political correctness. When you recognize that the the head of NPR came from the New York Times, that may clear up some of the confusion about Juan’s firing.

Juan is going to be fine. He got a multi-million extension of his contract with FOX, and  NPR got a black eye.

Not a bad day, overall.

They Are Not On Our Side

Another example that the teachers unions are NOT on our side.

New York newspapers have filed a request with the NYC school district to release the “value-added” ratings of their teachers. The school district has said that they can find no statutory reason to deny such a request.

The teachers union has filed to stop the information from becoming public, spooked no doubt by the LA Times publishing of similar data in los Angeles and the embarrassment attending the ratings – since no all teachers were rated “excellent.”

The court will have a hearing in November. I am certain we have not seen the end of the union delaying tactics. They are NOT on the side of students or parents!

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/10/the-new-york-city-school-system-agreed-thursdayto-delay-releasingteacher-effectiveness-ratings-based-on-studenttest-scoresunt.html

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

While the voiceofsandiego.org seems to think my comment that potholes are the new public art started a conversation on public art, I beg to differ.

as the link shows. supporters of public art and I are actually talking past each other. Simply being a human, even from the same “country”  does not mean we can effect communication — Norwegians have little in common with Laplanders, and they cannot communicate with each other.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/arts/article_83b3bd9a-dd25-11df-bb11-001cc4c03286.html

While I Realize Not Everyone Reads the North County Times….

Re. the LTE by Bonie Pickens. I know Bonnie, and she is an absolutely lovely lady.

But, I suspect she is suffering from THE POLL NUMBERS Syndrome, something that afflicts many liberals today.

Liberals thought they were participating in a post Capitalist Era, marching lockstep with their European counterparts to a new era of social democracy – only to see Greece fail, riots in the streets of Paris, Germany admitting that multiculturalism has failed, and Britain planning a huge retrenchment of government workers and services, while the vaunted Obamacare is so widely despised that it takes the Democratic Party into temporary political oblivion.

This has caused great panic and permits liberals to further lose traction with their dream.

Post capitalism has become post Obamaism, in the virtual blink of an eye, and liberals are discombobulated. On these very pages, otherwise Gracious people have retreated into name-calling rather than addressing issues, and this lovely liberal lady has in one letter shown a disconnect between fact and opinion.

My recent LTE re General Petraeus vis a vis his salary/benefits/scope of work in contrast to the City Manager of Escondido (a letter widely supported by conservatives and liberals on this blog) was held up more than a week by the NC Times for error checking.

(They could not find the wages of a Four-Star General, or his learned vacation time (leave) despite the ability of any blogger on this blog to find both in less than a minute.

I was particularly dismayed by their inability to confirm the earned vacation time by a Four-Star General because it is the same as for a Private or a Seaman…four weeks a year, earned at a rate of 2.5 days a month! Has no one at the NCT served?)

But no newspaper can fact check opinion, such as Bonnie Pickens’ declaration that the Tea Party assembly was a “love fest” – yet she asks that the previous writers opinion that “Muslims will be ready to step in and take control” or “How many intelligent people voted for radical Obama? Zero!” be sourced and checked? One needs a source for those opinions about as much as the opinion that the Tea Party assembly was a “love fest.’

 

But I would suggest to my fellow libertarian/conservatives that we cut liberals a lot of slack for several weeks – there is panic in the ranks. Justifiable panic, to be certain. There will be querulous remarks, charges of racism, demands for opinions to be fact checked.  Their great movement has been derailed by Greece, Spain, France, Germany, Britain and now those stupid American voters who simply do not know what is best for them!

Their Philosopher-King has not been able to bring the peasants of Kallipolis out of their malaise sufficiently to retain their support – but then we all the riff-raff are stupid.

Dreams of  Kallipolis die hard. Cut the liberals some slack – they are thrashing about in severe pain. To quote to C.O. of the battleship Texas at Santiago Bay as he swept by the destroyed Spanish fleet (1898), “Don’t cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying.”

 

 

 

Glad I don’t Live In San Diego

The machinations going on in downtown San Diego are a whirlwind to comprehend: There is a tax and reform (prop. D); a HUGE library construction proposal, complete with a school at the top; a new City Hall under serious consideration; a redevelopment fiasco; a proposed foot of Broadway development that has been seriously delayed; and did I mention, the City is out of money and a huge pension payment looms!

(Did I mention the Chargers? They are threatening to leave, and with all the fans coming dressed as empty seats (because the Chargers STINK!), it is apparent that only the City Council cares.)

Now, mix in a mayor who has gone rogue in his secrecy, a City Council in denial about finances, a city falling apart in its infrastructure with pot holes approaching sink-holes and breaking pipes, everywhere.

Now, I suppose that there are cities in worse shape – after all we still have good weather (although this mayor/city council could find a way to screw that up as well) – but I suspect few have as many balls in the air that have little hope of being caught.

I find it absolutely amazing that a city can live on the edge for so long without falling into the abyss. That is the power of a continuing stream of taxes.

Philosopher-King

If you really want to read some of the far-left liberal blogs, you can drop in on occasion to the North County Times Letter discussion group.

They are in denial over the coming disaster, and I understand their emotions. In 1964 I was shocked when Goldwater lost by such a huge amount – and I eventually understood that everyone I knew favored Goldwater but that everyone I knew was not everyone, and that I tended to associate with people “like me.”

The liberals on the blog are in complete denial, and in the recent past have even complained that their favored president has been losing support primarily because he has not moved sufficiently far left, sufficiently fast.

 

It is predictable that after the election, they will claim that their enlightened position was actually the best position but that the rest of the country bumpkins simply could not comprehend the nuances of the preferred programmic excellence as offered by their highly-educated and enlightened president.

Most liberals would not be so condescending, but with the anonymity of the blog they are more willing to express their disdain – although they will not quite bring themselves to use terms like “the little people” of “the uneducated masses.”

No, President Obama is their Philosopher-King of their Kallipolis, and his problems are not generated by him but rather by the “know-nothings” – Lilliputians, all —  who bind his excellence. Boobs! Boors! Voting against their best interest – which of course the liberals will define.

I would not advise contributing to that blog. The liberals are viscous in their name-calling, and so contributing will simply upset you, but reading it will be enlightening. There are not to many venues for rational expression available (I prefer the blogs on voiceofsandiego.org), but as a quick read to see the depth of far-left irrationality, and denial of reality, the NCTimes Letters Discussion is hard to beat.

Just don’t take it too seriously. I will occasionally drop a knowledge bomb on them and then leave and let them chew on it but I will not respond to any of their responses. At the voiceofsandiego.org I will continue a conversation because their liberals are more rational and less confrontational.

 

Taking a Cue From #10 Downing Street

You can see the problem with (semi)(quasi)(pseudo) and (real) socialism – eventually, it runs out of other people’s money. Then, if continued, it becomes Cuba, or East Germany…

But, if someone tries to turn around the disaster, it becomes today’s Greece, or France or Britain. Britain is going for austerity today. (Britain will cut 490,000 public sector jobs over 10 years – a LOT for that nation.)

 

We can only hope that when the time comes for “retrenchment” that our government unions will not turn violent as in other countries, but we are not immune although we have a different culture.

I believe that our government unions do not have sufficient public support to call for a “General Strike,’ and that the public support for firing the strikers ala the Reagan firing of the Air Controllers will immediately come to the fore if strikes do occur.

European nations have had several generations of immersion into a culture of socialism, whereas we only have fewer than two tumultuous years, and polls indicate the natives are restless. Public unions do not have broad public support, because their excesses have been visibly, public.

But there is going to be pain, nevertheless. The welfare recipients have plenty of time on their hands to cry, and the press has plenty of printers ink and interest in doing the sob-stories.

In the end, there is an end to the money.

That trumps everything.

(Unless you want a society that revels in re-repairing your 1957 Chevy Bel Aire.)

Early Analysis

It becomes more apparent that the Democrats are going to hold major wins in California, New York and Washington, but suffer major losses everywhere else.

California would have been in play except that the Republicans fielded a dud for Governor – a woman with no consistency of thought or platform, whose sole positive was that she is not Jerry Brown. A used swab handle could have beaten Jerry Brown – and almost anyone in the state except Meg Whittman.

Jerry Brown suffers from the Harry Reid syndrome – anyone could beat him also except the person selected by the Republicans. Old Harry may lose yet, as may Jerry, but it took MAJOR Republican mis-steps to make both of those races anything but a pushover!

There are a LOT of Republican self-inflicted wounds. A little more early recognition of the prospects for a Republican rout would have given the Republicans an opportunity to have fielded candidates better than Sharon Angle and O’Donnell and thereby not provided the nation with hourly doses of Comedy Central.

Now make no mistake, Meg, Sharon and Christine O’Donnell are still better than the Democrats they are running against – but just barely! Stronger candidates with the same message would have won in a walk-off home run, instead there are major seats that are in play when they should not be close.

Hopefully, before the next election I two years the politicians in both political parties will do better. The Democrats actually fielded the single most laughable candidate in this election, Alvin Green in South Carolina. The fact that his gaffs are not nightly fodder for the comics as are the Republicans is just testimony that the comics prefer Democrats – and there is a racial component also. Comics will not make fun of a Black man – unless he is a Republican.