I’ll be honest, I’ve been having a real struggle trying to get myself into the Christmas Spirit this year. I fully recognize that my life is pretty darn good generally speaking, but that doesn’t alleviate the worry/concern/incredulity that has been running non-stop through my head since early 2020 and has frankly, just been getting worse – seemingly by the hour – for the last 18 months. And I know I’m not the only one feeling this way.
Nevertheless, there is more than likely someone you know, maybe someone right in your inner-circle, that is having a rougher time than you. Keep that in mind, and try to keep kindness in your heart. I’m not saying you need to go out of your way to make their lives better or take on some other burden to get it off their shoulders…just don’t make things worse for ’em. Sometimes the smallest gesture can make the biggest change in a person’s day.
Ok. I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Wishing you all the best, and please know that I appreciate y’all.
As a lifelong Californian I am no stranger to living amongst the homeless. For a number of years I lived in both Downtown San Jose and East San Jose, both areas habitually populated by the down and out, going back to the early 1980’s. Quite possibly longer, but that is when I personally became aware of it…
When I lived downtown I had a 10 block walk to work. Every day I was accosted by transients asking for money. Every. Single. Day. It was exhausting. I was poor, very poor, at the time. Like 5 people in a 2 bedroom apartment poor, no insurance – health or otherwise – poor. I looked at these folks as in desperate need and tried not to have my heart hardened towards them. I took to carrying food in my pack and when I was asked for money, I would say no and then offer them whatever food I was carrying – maybe a granola bar or a little bag of chips or whatever…simple grab and munch stuff. More often than not the offer of food was refused. That told me a lot about these people. It was an eye opener to say the least.
Fast forward 35 years or so, and the problem is 100x times worse. San Jose has shanty towns (aka “encampments”) all over the place now. Events they used to have, like the annual Music in the Park events, went down the tubes because they were becoming overrun by the derelict mob. San Francisco, a mere hour north of San Jose is infinitely worse. It is a sad state of affairs State-wide.
Year after year we’re told we need to spend MORE money to combat homelessness, despite having spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years on the problem and the problem getting bigger and more pronounced everywhere you go in “The Golden State”.
As if the whole situation weren’t enough to make your blood boil, then you come across stories like this…
Our glorious “leaders” devise this super-genius plan to spend EIGHTEEN MILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS to supply between 175 and 200 “tiny homes” for the homeless as “transitional” housing.
$18,000,000 ÷ 200 = $90,000
If you click the link and see the pics, you’ll note that these “tiny homes” are essentially garden sheds that cost between $2-3k each at your local Home Depot or Lowes… Add some insulation and an AC unit, you might spend 5 grand. So where does the other $85k per unit go?
Most of the $17.7 million grant will go to operations and administration: Up to $14.6 million is slated for First Step Communities, which will operate the site, and $842,000 will go to county administrative services. The county is also paying WellSpace $2.2 million for a three-year lease of the lot.
I’m sorry, but this is simply disgraceful. They’d be better off putting $85k in a trust for each of the 200 people and pay a single trust administrator to dole it out responsibly. That could get a person into actual housing. Get them into a treatment center. Allow them to find a job… But no, instead we’ll spend millions to “help” and NOTHING will change for the better. In fact, I’d bet hard money that within 3 years our homeless population will be double what it is now, we’ll be “on the hook” for ever more taxes and our quality of life will be further degraded. For starters.
The most current estimate I could find puts the Californian homeless population at just under 172,000. Extrapolate the math above – 172,000 x $90,000 each for “help” and you’ve got a price tag of 15.48 BILLION DOLLARS. Putting it into a different perspective, that $18 million “investment” in Sacramento will impact less than 0.12% of our CURRENT homeless population in the state.
I expect there are going to be a lot of people getting big paychecks over this, and subsequently more than a few politicians getting some really juicy donations to their reelection coffers, but for the taxpayers, we’ll just keep getting the shaft and the homeless will get more lip service and empty promises.
This is a hopeless situation given the current crop of bureaucrats. Don’t get your hopes up for clean streets and safe neighborhoods. So long as the grift carries on like this, things are only going to get worse. After all, our “ruling class” has a ton of money to make off our collective misery!
We’re gonna need a lot of tar and feathers, folks!
Sorry for the crabby rant, but thanks for stopping by!
DISCLAIMER: In no uncertain terms do I want this blog to be associated with “politics”, and it is a subject that I try really hard to avoid writing about, but I saw a story earlier that at first, made me laugh. Then I realized it WASN’T a story from the Babylon Bee, these people were serious. So then I laughed again, but decided it needed further examination.
From the article in question: “NBC News presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss on Sunday warned a second Donald Trump administration would be a “presidential dictatorship.”
Now, before I go any further let me state for the record that I am NOT a Trump supporter. I did not vote for him either time he was on the ballot. I find him crass and boorish and ill-mannered and probably a great many more negative adjectives could be added if I were too spend the time thinking them up. The only thing I truly appreciated about his first run, was that he represented a poke in the eye to “the establishment”, which was sorely needed and long overdue. I was disappointed in my fellow American citizens when they elected him, thinking it was all a joke to them as “nobody that is serious would ever vote for this charlatan”! Nevertheless, I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he did once he was in the Big Chair.
That was the eye opening era for me. Not because of what HE did, but because of what every other politician, pundit, and media outlet did. The relentless coverage of every word that came out of his mouth or out of his Twitter feed. The incessant bashing of him at every turn before he’d had a chance to do ANYTHING, meaningful or otherwise. I developed not “trump derangement syndrome” but Trump fatigue because of the non-stop reporting (and twisting and spinning) of every. single. thing. It was exhausting. And most of it, as we now know was utter nonsense. And outright lies.
I looked at Trump as though he were in a “Lame Duck Session” from day one. I never expected much from him, as he was stymied from every which way, he surrounded himself with some unscrupulous people, he relied too heavily on his inexperienced family for advice and he pissed off a lot of people already in “The Club”. What he said he wanted to do was pretty bland for the most part – strengthen the middle class, blah, blah, blah – but I had grown accustomed to politicians telling us what we wanted to hear and then actually delivering none of it once the votes were cast. But frankly I couldn’t understand why on Earth he was SOOO hated and reviled. I was shocked when he decided to run again. Why would anyone bring that level of hatred and bile upon themselves? Then when Biden was selected as the nominee? I figured Trump was a shoe-in, which frankly I didn’t see how he could be any worse than Biden. I’m STILL stunned that he got the Dem nomination.
Anyhow. As a person with eyes and more than two brain cells to rub together, I have seen the “Biden pResidency” run (away) from one disaster to another at a breakneck pace and have seen the unelected beauracracy turn into something straight outta Orwell. What I haven’t seen, and believe me I’ve been looking, is anything, and I do mean ANYTHING that has improved since Trump left office. From where I’m sitting – and I say this as a registered independent and non-fan of DJT – EVERYTHING HAS GOTTEN PROGRESSIVELY WORSE since January ’21. Out of the frying pan and into the…septic tank?!?
We’ve got political prisoners sitting in jail for over 2 years without proper charges being filed. We’ve got an historic border problem that is a disaster on so many levels its maddening, we’ve got distrust for our highest levels of law enforcement (and for good reason!!), and untold corruption from the holder of the highest office in the land, if not the world. And I’m just talking about the “cash and prizes” part of the corruption. Then there is the use of the Dept. of “Justice” to go after his leading political rival.
And this folks, is just the tip of the iceberg! If we all know this stuff already – and we do – imagine how much other shady stuff has been, or still is, going on that we DON’T know about?
I guess what I’m saying is, and I hate to be the one to break it to you, Mr. Beschloss, noted presidential historian, WE ALREADY HAVE A PRESIDENTIAL DICTATORSHIP. Two and a half years, and running. And it’s getting worse. I don’t know who’s pulling Joe’s strings, but clearly they don’t have America’s best interests in mind. Poor ol’ Joe just hasn’t got any mind left, he’s just become the face of American Communism, a role he will continue to perform – and make no mistake, it IS a performance – until the egregious crimes are too many to sweep under the rug and he’s replaced by another useful idiot.
No, Trump won’t be ushering in a presidential dictatorship, if anything he’d be continuing one. Not that “they” will ever let that happen!
God help us all… Who’d have ever thought Trump’s time in office would be looked at as ” the good old days”?!?!
The Boring Old Man 