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Breakdown In Civil Order

The California "homeless" problem just keeps getting worse. The insufferable prick, Governor Newsom is bombarding us with campaign ads on TV and other media about how the state of California is the fourth biggest economy in the world. "Homelessness" has in fact increased despite the prick's assurances it is a top priority and taxing the shit out of us to address the problem.

Meanwhile in the City of Angels;

Images and video show homeless in Los Angeles syphoning water and power in camps sprouting throughout the city's streets - with some of the brazen encampments even boasting working washing machines. Sagging tents, rusting RVs, and makeshift structures have become commonplace along Hollywood Boulevard to Venice Beach - and even in the shadow of City Hall. Over the past year, the camps have become increasingly bold, putting up full-sized tents and cordoning off entire streets, much to the chagrin of outraged locals. Now, citizens have snapped evidence that the urban outposts are stealing water and power from the city to maintain a surprisingly lavish lifestyle while living out on the street, taking water from hydrants and electricity from any outlet they come across.

Daily Mail
What's your solution?
 
Working While Homeless: A Tough Job For Thousands Of Californians : NPR
Pinning down exactly how many Californians are working while homeless is not easy. Many try to hide it. But recent estimates suggest that it's not uncommon.

A 2017 survey of the homeless population in San Francisco found 13 percent of respondents reporting part or full-time employment. That's in a city with an estimated 7,499 people experiencing homelessness.

This year, an estimated 10 percent of the 4,990 people living unsheltered in San Diego said they were currently working.

Los Angeles County has more than 50,000 residents who are homeless. Eight percent of adults surveyed in 2017 said they were working to some degree, mostly in part-time, seasonal or temporary work. Among homeless adults with children, 27 percent said they were working either part or full-time.
 
Certainly random school violence is something that is newer.
Is it?

I would like to see some evidence for that; As far as I can tell, it's been a feature of US schools since before WWII.
My daughter and all other children in schools today have to practice active shooters drills. I didn't need to do that.
That's not actually evidence of a new or increased threat.

By the same logic, cars are more dangerous today because they have to have airbags and seatbelts, which were simply not considered necessary in the good old 1950s.
 
Working While Homeless: A Tough Job For Thousands Of Californians : NPR
Pinning down exactly how many Californians are working while homeless is not easy. Many try to hide it. But recent estimates suggest that it's not uncommon.

A 2017 survey of the homeless population in San Francisco found 13 percent of respondents reporting part or full-time employment. That's in a city with an estimated 7,499 people experiencing homelessness.

This year, an estimated 10 percent of the 4,990 people living unsheltered in San Diego said they were currently working.

Los Angeles County has more than 50,000 residents who are homeless. Eight percent of adults surveyed in 2017 said they were working to some degree, mostly in part-time, seasonal or temporary work. Among homeless adults with children, 27 percent said they were working either part or full-time.
A study at the community college where I work found that about 8% of our students describe themselves as "homeless", but nearly 64% agreed that they were "housing insecure". There's a vicious social stigma to not owning or renting a home, and people are loathe to admit it even if it means going through mental gymnastics like defining their car or a serial progression of couches as a home of sorts.
 
Certainly random school violence is something that is newer.
Is it?

I would like to see some evidence for that; As far as I can tell, it's been a feature of US schools since before WWII.
Depends on the metric, which is why I used the qualifying term "random" and the term "newer".

By the same logic, cars are more dangerous today because they have to have airbags and seatbelts, which were simply not considered necessary in the good old 1950s.
We are talking about school shootings and the expected chances of them, which have risen to a level where schools feel it is likely enough that they need preparation drills for them, like fire drills.

Looking at the numbers, the 50's and 60's had sparse shooting events. 70's to 90's, average up to 10 a year. 1998 is a turning point where gun related events at schools go from localized / targeted events to flat out random and deadly. The 2000s were likewise, but again the mass murders were sprinkled in. The 2010s it starts getting bleaker, with over 200 shootings, with 8 events killing 5 or more people. That number was 3 in the 90's, 4 in the 00's.

The '20s are on pace to reach 400.
 
In zones that are on limits to police, there are assaults, murder and rape (as you persistently point out) and suppression of speech. People can be real assholes regardless of their political or ideological viewpoints. Yet for some reason, you seem only to be aware of "the left" with your increasingly rightwing screeds.
He lives in Seattle. The looniness of the left is quite strong there. The one conservative is moving to Boise next month.

A lot of people live in the Seattle area and experience nothing like what Steve describes, although incidents of that sort make it into the newspapers. Crime rates have been rising across the country. Even in the Seattle area! Most of these stories tend to accumulate and get reported out on local Fox News, because they have the audience that most wants to hear the news that crime rates are going up and that it is all the fault of Democrats. Same thing happens when Republicans are in control of everything, and they still use the same excuse to explain the rise in crime rates.
 
In zones that are on limits to police, there are assaults, murder and rape (as you persistently point out) and suppression of speech. People can be real assholes regardless of their political or ideological viewpoints. Yet for some reason, you seem only to be aware of "the left" with your increasingly rightwing screeds.
He lives in Seattle. The looniness of the left is quite strong there. The one conservative is moving to Boise next month.

A lot of people live in the Seattle area and experience nothing like what Steve describes, although incidents of that sort make it into the newspapers. Crime rates have been rising across the country. Even in the Seattle area! Most of these stories tend to accumulate and get reported out on local Fox News, because they have the audience that most wants to hear the news that crime rates are going up and that it is all the fault of Democrats. Same thing happens when Republicans are in control of everything, and they still use the same excuse to explain the rise in crime rates.
I want to make a note that I looked into the numbers on crime rates in Seattle (because I'm just geeky that way) and they appear to be having a notably higher than national average increase on crime.

And the numbers are complicated. Some cities are seeing declines in some type of crimes, increases in others. Some cities are still near 60 year lows in crime, others are seeing much higher numbers.
 
He lives in Seattle. The looniness of the left is quite strong there. The one conservative is moving to Boise next month.

A lot of people live in the Seattle area and experience nothing like what Steve describes, although incidents of that sort make it into the newspapers. Crime rates have been rising across the country. Even in the Seattle area! Most of these stories tend to accumulate and get reported out on local Fox News, because they have the audience that most wants to hear the news that crime rates are going up and that it is all the fault of Democrats. Same thing happens when Republicans are in control of everything, and they still use the same excuse to explain the rise in crime rates.
I want to make a note that I looked into the numbers on crime rates in Seattle (because I'm just geeky that way) and they appear to be having a notably higher than national average increase on crime.

And the numbers are complicated. Some cities are seeing declines in some type of crimes, increases in others. Some cities are still near 60 year lows in crime, others are seeing much higher numbers.

My personal experience with the U.S. (especially w.r. mental illness or homelessness) is in the very distant past. But just yesterday I watched a one-hour YouTube titled "Seattle is Dying." Some interviewees loved Seattle but are now moving away — often to nearby Bellevue — because some neighborhoods are now "disgusting." It is not a homeless problem, but a drug problem. Or a problem of mental illness caused by drugs. Police find arrests to be useless: dealers and users are released automatically for any quantity less than 3 grams of heroin. In a list of cities, Seattle had the highest crime rate excepting only San Francisco.

The video contrasts Seattle with Providence, Rhode Island where drug abusers are incarcerated but immediately provided with counseling and placed on methadone (or either of two other anti-craving medicines) and usually continue the program upon release. Some interviewees stated that being arrested saved their lives.

The video maker thought it very inappropriate that Seattle's problem was allowed to persist with no attempt at solution. Providence's approach of INCARCERATION and INTERVENTION should be emulated (in the view of the KOMO reporter).
 
Seattle does have a problem in that the idiotic "defund the police" movement had a real impact on the police department in that it caused a reduction in its budget and triggered the resignation of Chief Carmen Best, who was a very competent administrator. That, combined with the general rise in crime, did contribute to its poor statistical performance. However, the rise in crime has had a broader impact beyond the urban core of the city and has hit even areas where more traditional conservatives have been in charge of police budgets and policies. The problem, as I see it, is that the problems are exaggerated by local news organizations seeking out the more sensational attention-grabbing stories and presenting them as representative of the norm. I live in a more suburban location that is 15 minutes away from downtown Seattle. We've experienced a noticeable rise in property crimes, but the police are doing a good job of managing it together with cooperation from neighborhood watch groups coordinated by social media such as Nextdoor.
 
The problem, as I see it, is that the problems are exaggerated by local news organizations seeking out the more sensational attention-grabbing stories and presenting them as representative of the norm.
This, coupled with the vast increase in news hours being broadcast, and the need to fill those hours with something spectacular, and the prevalence of mobile phones that can take video, is a large part of the problem.

I see a lot more news about violent crime today than I did twenty years ago, because more crimes are being videoed, more violence is being broadcast, and the local news channels are becoming less and less averse to using footage from the other side of the world, rather than the other side of the city.

Twenty years ago, a report about a cop being beaten up would only have been news if it had happened in my own town. Because TV stations knew people didn't care to watch news stories about stuff in other states, or other countries. But that was when the report was just some anchorman reading a teleprompter. Nowadays, if there's footage of a fist impacting a cop's nose, it's gonna make the news, even if the cop in question is half a world away.

And Channel 9 won't mention the city it happened in in any of their trailers. "See the shocking moment when a routine traffic stop turns violent, putting an officer in hospital - Watch Channel 9 news at six!", will be likely the majority of the coverage many people see of this incident. Only the tiny subset who bother to watch the main bulletin at six will discover that the incident was in Bumfuck, Alabama, and not in Crestmead.

A Crestmead resident could easily feel that the world is becoming lawless and dangerous. But it's not; It's just becoming easier to get ratings by implying that it is.
 
Paul Pelosi (husband of Nancy) attacked in their home;

The assailant who violently assaulted Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer on early Friday morning was looking for the speaker herself when he broke into their San Francisco home, shouting 'Where's Nancy? Where's Nancy?' Speaker Pelosi was in Washington D.C. when Paul Pelosi, 82, was brutally attacked. He was left with significant injuries in the assault but is expected to recover. The suspect entered the Pelosi residence through a sliding glass door at the back of the house. Aerial footage showed broken panes of smashed glass at a door to their home.

Daily Mail

Nothing to worry about, crime is higher in red states, or something.
 
Wait, so in your mind, "break down in civil order" is about the rise in right-wing political violence?

Last year, David DePape posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming Covid vaccines were deadly. "The death rates being promoted are what ever 'THEY' want to be promoted as the death rate," one post read.

DePape also posted links to YouTube videos with titles like "Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!" and "Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)"
 
I read that BOTH Leader McConnell AND Leader McCarthy have voiced condolences and are happy that Paul Pelosi's assailant has been arrested. Who says Congress is too partisan? (Have Carlson, MTG, Trump, Jones and other top QOPAnon thinkers weighed in?)
 
Paul Pelosi (husband of Nancy) attacked in their home;

The assailant who violently assaulted Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer on early Friday morning was looking for the speaker herself when he broke into their San Francisco home, shouting 'Where's Nancy? Where's Nancy?' Speaker Pelosi was in Washington D.C. when Paul Pelosi, 82, was brutally attacked. He was left with significant injuries in the assault but is expected to recover. The suspect entered the Pelosi residence through a sliding glass door at the back of the house. Aerial footage showed broken panes of smashed glass at a door to their home.

Daily Mail

Nothing to worry about, crime is higher in red states, or something.
I agree, rightwing political violence is a danger in all states, not just in those they consider Republican territory. In fact, it seems far more likely that they would target Democratic legislators as opposed to Republican ones. If you feel we need to do more to combat this rising insurgency I agree, though as usual, I notice you offer no actual solutions.
 
I guess the "progressive" policies don't work in Canada either eh;



What's that all aboot, eh?

The usual lying nonsense. Vancouver has pretty low crime rates for a major city, especially by way of comparison to the major metropoles of the US.

Observe: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp

No one would argue that crime, homelessness, drug use and so forth aren't real problems, but to look at one of the safer metropolitan areas in Canada and go "Crime! The city is dying!" is ridiculous melodrama.
 
Vancouver has pretty low crime rates for a major city, especially by way of comparison to the major metropoles of the US.
Cool story but that is probably no comfort to the people of Vancouver that are victims of violent crimes which are increasing.

No one would argue that crime, homelessness, drug use and so forth aren't real problems, but to look at one of the safer metropolitan areas in Canada and go "Crime! The city is dying!" is ridiculous melodrama.
Good grief.
 
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