Considered Opinions

Homeless People

Largely composed of sufferers of substance abuse, mental illness, or both, are victims of nit-wit politicians in State Governments – Governments that once provided for them. They are now abandoned upon the foolish notion^[i]First introduced in California by the 1967, Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, known as LPS that stemmed from the pressure of lawyers and patient rights advocates, like the ACLU. Later, Ronald Reagan had no choice but to sign what had become a veto-proof bill in 1972, satisfying the Democrat-controlled Legislature that had passed it by a vote of 77-1. that it is more compassionate to let these “disabled” people live on the street, wallowing in their own waste, with needles sticking out of their arms, than to house them and provide the care they desperately need.

Street Criminals

These people also need help, disadvantaged by the lack of education and opportunity due to no fault of their own. Many if not most, are where they are because their parents, and their parents’ parents’, and their parents’ parents’ parents struggled with the same unhappy state of our society.

The problem is a complex one, but these potentially productive “have-nots” remain unable to imagine a way to get a leg-up in Society without stealing from the “haves” – a regrettable situation, seemingly beyond the understanding of policymakers.

Illegal Aliens

This group is fundamentally different from the other two, being totally created by ill-conceived public policy. Milton Friedman said it best, but he said it so many times, in different settings, that he is often misquoted. To paraphrase, he said that immigration to jobs can be a good thing, and immigration to welfare is quite another. You obviously cannot have uncontrolled immigration and welfare at the same time because you have no way to sort out the workers from the beggars. Even in the absence of Friedman’s wisdom, it should be obvious that a country without a border fails to meet the definition of a country.

The Left Side

Some feel the pain and despair of these people more intensely than others, and those people tend to endorse potential remedies that involve empathy, understanding, and supporting these people, most of whom are helpless to pull themselves out of the open sewer that has become the intercities.

Their solutions involve building housing and giving them free needles, food stamps, and the like. While these programs make everyone feel better, they don’t really help the situation at all. In some ways, they make the problem worse.

Social experiments of that magnitude require a handful of generations to show results and politicians have a handful of years between elections. Even making a dent in the poverty of a single ghetto is beyond the capability of our governmental system, so thinking that the decades-old problems in Chicago or Philadelphia can be solved that way is foolish at best. The problem has gone on too long and has grown too large to be helped by such Left-single-minded attempts.

The Right Side

Others think that further enabling their aberrant behavior increases the problem and draws others into the cesspool. They opt for confining them and involuntarily treating their ailments. As mentioned earlier, that battle was fought and lost in California with the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act in 1972, which abandoned State hospitals that were dedicated to helping those people.

The problem with these Right-single-minded methods is that (a) they don’t address the roots of the problem, and (b) we could not possibly hire enough cops or build jails fast enough anyway.