You're absolutely right! The homeless have always been with us, and it's high time government policy caught up with that. Yet, might there be a kernel of subtlety here?
In some places, the homeless quite commonly register intersections or similar locations as their stationary home location. Then things like notices are delivered to them there. This, as grandparent implies, is not so straightforward with a mobile vehicle.
What does that leave? A requirement to constantly update your location of record with local government? Overbearing surveillance to track the homeless so government can reach them? All-electronic systems relying on devices and services the homeless almost certainly can't afford? None of these are great solutions. All are clearly problematic, in the damning social justice sense.
Again, you're completely correct. We need to admit, accept, acknowledge, and embrace our unhoused friends and neighbors. It's just possible that a truck and a tent under a bridge might pose slightly different levels of difficulty for addressing-type needs.
> In some places, the homeless quite commonly register intersections or similar locations as their stationary home location. Then things like notices are delivered to them there.
There are also folks who choose to live in vans or RVs as a lifestyle. There are also folks who go backpacking overseas for months or years at a time, or who work nomadic jobs (like travel nursing) which move them every few months.
You don't have to be homeless to lack a permanent address.
You're right! All of these things are true, real, and valid scenarios that can lead to this situation.
Those who have relative means will often maintain a mailbox of some sort. There are services that accept mail and scan it for you and other ways. Few of which are available to the homeless, due generally to a lack of financial means.
Lacking a real permanent address doesn't inherently make you uncontactable by governments. It's the combination of lacking a permanent address and lacking the means to work around it that creates a perfect storm.
Fairly limited, I would think. There's a distinction to be drawn between a "home," and a "home address," in the case that said home is moveable. Legal notice typically is served to the latter.
Also, this ruling isn't precedential, because it's not in a court of appeals. Practically speaking, this means it only really applies to this single case, and possibly other Washington state courtrooms, but nowhere else.
The submission links to an article at fox13memphis.com. The user I'm replying to suggests a "much better" article at seattletimes.com because it includes content which I'm pointing out is already contained at the submission link.
> Moreover, the courts "have consistently held that there is no constitutional right to housing."
I'm still puzzled at how our society affirms our Right to Life, while simultaneously affirming food, water, and shelter as Essential to Life, yet will never make the logical conclusion that food/water/shelter are necessarily included in our right to life.
1. All men are entitled to life.
2. Food, water, and shelter are essential to life.
recognizing the right to life is a lot easier than figuring out how to provide shelter/food/water to everyone without expecting them to pay for it. those resources come from somewhere. that somewhere is other people, and taking food/water/shelter from them could kill them, and forcing them to provide whatever they have in excess of their own necessities is going to cause many of them to become "net consumers" and expect you to find food and housing for them.
the nth order effects of these programs need to be considered.
Rights are mainly seen in the US as negative rights. The Bill of Rights Constitutional amendments are all proscriptions on government behavior. A right to life means that I must not kill you. If however, you are choking to death, there is no obligation for me to help you.
I think negative rights are the way to go. Once you start having positive rights, then you place obligations on others which ultimately require force or the threat of force to make people do something. In addition, positive rights has a tendency to keep on growing - for example a right to Internet access. The downside of that is that rights then do not become something that is stable across time and space but just a synonym for something someone arbitrarily decided to call a right.
I'd argue that it's the citizens who forget (often thinking that the Bill of Rights Constitutional amendments are positive rights).
The government is quite aware - and works within the framework established for it. It's up to us as citizens to challenge it (or remove it) if we feel it isn't abiding by the rules.
Sadly, most of the populace can't even be bothered to vote, let alone stay engaged on these issues.
One of the many pitfalls you run into when the institution enforcing your rights and the institution being enforced against happen to be one and the same.
I agree. It is the best approach. Your right to not be killed doesn't require that I supply you with anything, except protection of your rights from those that would violate them.
I see rights as those things that most people would not give up in order to have their rights protected by society. The right not to be hit for no reason is valued by most people. But having a right to hit anybody you want is not more highly valued by most people, as it also means you will be hit a lot.
That doesn't mean people shouldn't help each other or accept help or participate in mutual aid associations. But such voluntary aid has CONDITIONS. You have to be a decent person to get it. A right to help doesn't require good behavior.
And compulsory help is not practical either. Eventually, costs of providing it rise until quality has to be sacrificed and options have to be limited and often the opportunity cost of the free help is greater than the cost of paying for it yourself.
> If however, you are choking to death, there is no obligation for me to help you.
Mandatory reporting laws throw a crimp in this logic--for various sorts of crimes, some or all people may be obligated to report these crimes depending on state/federal laws as well as their profession. At least 18 states have no restrictions on profession, meaning anyone suspecting crimes such as child abuse is obligated to report.
Enforceability isn't something I'd know. Just making a point that we have plenty of cases where people are obligated to go out of their way to save someone else's life.
Homelessness is often seen as always being due to someone making bad choices. --If you work hard and live a clean life you won't have to worry about this.
Until people understand that personal responsibility doesn't stop people from falling into poverty, these issues will continue.
Could greater personal responsibility have kept anybody out of homelessness? probably so.
Could greater personal responsibility have kept everyone out of homelessness? highly unlikely.
For every person who is able to climb up using their bootstraps, as they say, are more resources freed up to help those who truly can't help themselves? Yes!
Society affirms our rights to all of these things. You, a member of society, are affirming them right now and many others agree with you. Our (The US's) legal system, on the other hand, doesn't affirm any of these rights. That's because, as others have mentioned, our rights are almost all negative. Proscribe things that the government and other institutions could do to you. The "right to life" is a line from our declaration of independence. Which is, legal speaking, just some nice words someone once wrote, it's not something that will compel a court to rule in your favor. Courts, despite what you say, are actually quite logical on this matter. The right to life is completely illogical, how can you have a right to something which, by it's very nature you must eventually lose?
The fundamental problem with what you're describing is that it creates a moral hazard. The only system that avoids moral hazard is making it each person's responsibility to take care of themselves.
Individual rights protect you from active abuse perpetrated by authorities. That's fair. Why should that extend to enslaving others until your Maslow needs are fulfilled? That's not fair, and is logically opposite to the concept of rights.
Let's be honest...what % would have an incentive to go out there if "food/water/shelter" were guaranteed?
And that money has to come from somewhere. The poor need a lot of helping hands (most people are a few paychecks away from living under a bridge) but a blank guarantee of food, shelter and utilities is not, IMO, the right way.
I'm watching closely for the implications of this ruling. There are already Seattle neighborhoods who have folks living in their RVs, cooking meth, with no trash service, no working sewer system, selling drugs out of their RV, spewing needles around the ground, and the police already refused to do anything about it.
Sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, but there needs to be enforcement of laws and respect to the neighborhood that you are living in, whether or not you are homeless.
This ruling is completely different from your example. Making and selling drugs and even littering is still 100% illegal, regardless of if you do it in your home or car. Very different from selling your car/home to pay parking tickets and fines.
Seattle police have already been told to stand down enforcing homeless folks living in vehicles, including when residents report drug selling, and health violations. This ruling will just add to the pressure for police to look the other way.
It's not fair to the residents of the neighborhood, or people living in vehicles that are respecting the law and minding their own business.
Are the people living in vehicles not minding their own business? How do you know the people living in homes are respecting the law?
Do you see that you're putting a value judgement on ownership of a home and attributing them with some ownership of the "neighborhood" while denying that broader sense of ownership to people choosing to reside in that neighborhood in their vehicles?
The people who own property contribute to the upkeep of the neighborhood in the form of property taxes. People living in cars do not. That is the fundamental difference.
That's zero-sum. If you're going to put more of that money into services to support vehicle-dwellers, what about the other areas that lose out? Road maintenance?
Road maintenance is contributing to the upkeep of the community, so that's not a use that illustrates the argument that vehicle dwellers aren't contributing to community upkeep.
But, yes, it's zero-sum: but if vehicles that are used more as houses are having tax revenue distributed as if they were being used more as transport, then people sleeping in cars are subsidizing drivers.
You're willfully ignoring the obvious classifiable difference between a vehicle used as a dwelling vs. a vehicle used for commuting. There could simply be a registration category for vehicle dwellings with increased fees to offset the difference. This could even translate into states providing facilities for pump outs and showers for those registered for vehicle dwellings to improve the sanitation of what's going to be happening regardless.
The reality is the law, as always, is lagging behind reality. Things have changed substantially in the last few decades in terms of how realistic it is to live a fairly normal and connected life from a vehicle. There is essentially no practical need for a mailing address or land line anymore for example, smart phones, internet, efficient solar panels...
Drug addicts/cooks living in squalor who happen to be in vehicles will be committing myriad obvious and easily policed crimes. Why those police are not doing their job is entirely orthogonal to if a vehicle should be considered a potential legal residence.
> There could simply be a registration category for vehicle dwellings with increased fees to offset the difference.
What incentive do people have to not lie about that? When someone loses their home, are they obligated to go to the DMV and update their registration and throw in a bunch of extra money? How do you police this? Do you have the police capacity to handle this?
How do you enforce violations? If someone is living in their car but didn't pay the registration, do you tow their car? Doesn't that get right back to the original problem?
> This could even translate into states providing facilities for pump outs and showers for those registered for vehicle dwellings to improve the sanitation of what's going to be happening regardless.
In the Seattle area, at least, there are free RV hookups for people to dump their waste. Many people just don't use them. Their vehicle may not actually be that driveable, or maybe they can't afford the gas, or maybe they simply don't care.
> There is essentially no practical need for a mailing address or land line anymore for example, smart phones, internet, efficient solar panels...
Yes, a well-adjusted, committed person can leave reasonably from a vehicle. But what about the people who live in vehicles in part because they aren't doing the work required to keep the social contract and be a participating member of society?
> Drug addicts/cooks living in squalor who happen to be in vehicles will be committing myriad obvious and easily policed crimes.
Many of these crimes aren't easily policed, actually. Drug possession requires a warrant to search a vehicle. Finding discarded paraphernalia isn't enough, nor is a witnessing drug use. Littering and waste dumping are almost impossible to police — you have to be caught in the act by a police officer.
Ignoring that, the reality is that Seattle isn't policing these.
I kinda thought society moved past equating "whether you have human rights" with "whether you own property" in the 1800's, but I guess some of us have yet to catch up.
Nowhere did I mention anything about human rights.
My point is that it's a reasonable stance for people who contribute to the upkeep of a neighborhood in the form of property taxes to have a greater claim to that neighborhood than people who decided that it would be a good place to park their car or camp for the night. Not sure if you live in a neighborhood where people regularly camp out and live out of their cars, but I do and there are tons of problems with it:
1. At a fundamental level, it is unfair. People who own or rent homes in the neighborhood spend lots of money (our property taxes are $600/month) in order to contribute to the the upkeep of the neighborhood. They also generally clean up after themselves and don't steal stuff.
2. People who own or rent are also tied to the neighborhood in a way that people who camp or live in cars are not. If the neighborhood goes to shit, it's easy to pull up camp or start your car and leave; you can be out in a few hours. If you rent, it's at least a few months to find a new place to live. For homeowners, you could be looking at years, plus many thousands of dollars in broker and moving costs.
3. It's not just that homeowners contribute to the well being of the neighborhood, it's that people who camp and live in cars actively do the opposite. After the city of Portland clears the regular camping spots in my neighborhood, a team of cleaners has to come in to dispose of waste. Many people, and thus, much taxpayer expense is involved. This happens every 6-8 weeks. Guess how many times the city has ever had to clean up in a similar way after homeowners... zero.
4. But it's more than just the clean up. Campers bring tons of crime with them. There is a tent at the campsite down the street from me that is actually a bicycle chop shop! And then there's the stolen cars that get stripped and abandoned in our neighborhood on a weekly basis when there is an active campsite. Oh, and there are tons of hypodermic needles all over the ground near the campsites.
So, yeah, I think it's pretty legitimate to not think it's fair for people who follow the rules, work hard, and contribute to society to have to watch their neighborhood get torn apart by people who are A) completely uninvested in the wellbeing of the neighborhood, and B) actively contributing to it's decline.
Being a citizen is not a license to do whatever you want. Nobody argues that people should be able to ignore posted parking restrictions when it suits them. Yet the negative externalities from people camping and living in their cars are way more significant than from parking in a loading zone or not paying the meter. Just ask anybody who lives in a neighborhood with a significant homeless presence.
> Are the people living in vehicles not minding their own business?
No, they aren't, mostly. There are probably a few that are conscientious, but over the past years, almost every RV that's gone through my neighborhood has brought problems with it.
Part of living in physical housing is that there are sewer lines to it and trash pick-up. RVs and cars don't have that. Most of those denizens are not driving halfway across town to drain their blackwater tanks or paying to dispose of their trash. Instead, the dump it out on the street before relocating.
In addition to the obvious health risk of literal human shit being dumped on the street and grass, that trash more often than not contains used needles, used toilet paper, and other dangerous stuff.
On top of that:
1. Along with piles of trash that had been jammed into the bushes, my neighbor found a discarded gun. (Fortunately he found it before his toddler did.)
2. My wife interrupted someone squatting and shitting on the ground in our alley. Multiple times.
3. We see and hear screaming matches and fights between people in and near RVs on a pretty regular basis.
4. Property theft is constant. Most of us don't ship things to our homes anymore. One friend has a giant bin with a lock on it for package delivery people to lock things in.
5. Our car has been broken into twice.
6. Someone once climbed our back fence and was wandering around the yard babbling incoherently.
7. A gas can was stolen out of the back of my truck.
> How do you know the people living in homes are respecting the law?
Let's not play the whataboutism game. That won't solve any problems.
The people living in their vehicles need real help. The city (and the country at large) has profound systemic problems around inequality, housing, healthcare, and drug addiction.
Pretending that the people living in their vehicles are law-abiding citizens whose homes happen to have wheels denies the full reality of their experience. Most of them, in addition to experiencing homelessness, are also experiencing drug addiction, often have mental illness, and are living in an environment that lacks the sewage and trash infrastructure needed for humans to live safely.
All of that needs to be addressed. These aren't just free spirits living the dream out of their VW bus. (If they do want to do that, more power to them. But they still gotta find a place for their shit and trash.)
No, let's instead not deplatform people by invoking the whataboutism critique.
When examining the causes and effects of issue that you'd rather not take place in your neighborhood it is essential to look at all the intersections of those issues and look at other situations where those issues are also present.
If you don't recognize the fact that a majority of those issues you listed are committed most frequently by traditionally housed people, in other neighborhood than your own, then you'll be blind to the larger systemic issues that need to be addressed to fix the problems. You'll also be much more likely to support a short-term solution that fixes your problems but not the larger problem.
I think for whatever reason you've gone aggro and painted me as some sort of NIMBY "let's round them all up and toss them in Sound" person, but what you're responding to is who you imagine I am, not what I said.
I certainly didn't depersonalize or "deplatform" people.
> If you don't recognize the fact that a majority of those issues you listed are committed most frequently by traditionally housed people, in other neighborhood than your own, then you'll be blind to the larger systemic issues that need to be addressed to fix the problems.
I certainly never claimed homeless people are the only ones who commit crimes, but I am pretty confident that the homed neighbors around me do not get into screaming matches in the street, shit in my alley, jam trash in my bushes, or dump blackwater on the street.
It's not because they're better people. It's because they have access to sewers, trash pickup, and soundproof walls. Any "solution" for homeless people that lets them continue to live in an environment without the physical infrastructure — shelter, sanitation, and trash — needed to live safely isn't a real solution.
That video is for assault not for selling drugs? But if the local police wont do anything you can call the DEA and make complaints. Especially if you have a meth lab and sales center in front of your house or business.
It is illegal, yes, but the reality is that it's not enforced. The letter of the law is irrelevant -- the law is what the police enforce.
Certainly, there is no practical way to enforce not littering. Are you going to have undercover cops patrolling around waiting for someone to drop something on the ground?
I live in a formerly-quiet neighborhood in Seattle. When my kids were 4 and 6, I had to teach them what a used needle looks like and to never ever touch one because trash like that started showing up on our street corner near parked RVs.
1. There are definitely some people living in vehicles that are not part of the drug trade as consumers and producers, and I'm very sympathetic to their plight, and supportive of them living in their vehicles if that's all they can afford.
2. There are definitely people living in vehicles that are drug addicts. I'm sympathetic to their plight, but it doesn't seem like letting them live without treatment is good for them or the surrounding community. This is a profoundly hard problem — how as a society do we deal with people whose addiction prevents them from making good life choices and upholding the social contract? How much agency should someone have when they use that agency to harm themselves and others?
3. There are definitely people living in vehicles that are drug producers and sellers. They should go to jail.
People who have strong opinions on this seem to believe only one of those categories exists, and then imagine solutions that deny the existence of the others. That's not practical. My experience from my street is that there are all three kinds, though unfortunately not many in the first group.
I care about the rights and life of people in these dire straits, but I also care about my own rights and those of my family. I'd like my children to be able to play in the yard without worrying about them rolling onto a dirty needle. I'd like my wife to be able to garden without finding trash and sewage in the bushes.
Even if someone is 100% supportive of letting people experiencing homelessness get by however they can, I hope they understand that it's not biologically safe for humans to live in areas without sewage and trash infrastructure. That's how you get cholera, hepatitis, etc.
The social contract is between the individuals (collectively) and the sovereign. Invoking the social contract is contrary to any complaint about non-enforcement because signing on means the sovereign can do whatever is necessary to keep the peace. In exchange, the individual agrees to go along with everything except the loss of their own life.
Sorry, maybe "social contract" isn't the right term. I just meant the work any person is expected to do in order to be a good citizen and a good neighbor.
Good or bad citizenship seems orthogonal to the situation described...though political rhetoric over the last forty years has encouraged people to identify as tax payers and consumers rather than citizens and to conflate shopping with civic participation. On the other hand, survival is rarely genteel.
> the sovereign can do whatever is necessary to keep the peace. In exchange, the individual agrees to go along with everything except the loss of their own life.
wow, how widely is this belief held? is there a name for it?
It's the Hobbesian view of the social contract, which is often contrasted with the Lockean view of the same subject which underpins both the US system in particular and arguably Western liberal democracy more generally.
It's not a particularly popular model, even though it was influential in developing views that remain popular today.
There are existing laws against cooking meth. There are existing laws against selling it. On the other hand, the homeless are citizens and municipal services like sewage and trash pickup are obligations of municipal government.
To put it another way, the people living in RV's are also residents of the neighborhoods and they are not homeless, just houseless.
The municipal services, in the US, are generally funded by property taxes. If you are in an RV you aren't paying for those services so I wouldn't agree that you have a "right" to them.
The municipal services, in the US, are generally funded by property taxes
The parent comment specifically referred to "municipal services like sewage and trash pickup" which, to my knowledge, are not funded by property taxes in any US state but by individual or association subscription and hookup fees, and those generally go to private entities.
Doubtful, if you have to sat "I am x but" that means you understand you are about to disprove your own position
Like saying "I support freedom of speech but..." No you do not...
>>there needs to be enforcement of laws and respect to the neighborhood that you are living in, whether or not you are homeless.
There needs to be respect for the individual and if a person is not causing physical harm to another person they need to be left alone.
"Respect" is a nebulous subjective concept that the government has no business attempting to enforce with law
"The Law" is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
> He had been living in his 2000 GMC pickup, parked on a side street, but the city of Seattle towed it because Long had violated a city rule that requires vehicles be moved every 72 hours.
Judging by the amount of leaves, gunk, and other crap that accumulates underneath the parked cars on my street (Which were also in the same place day, after day, after day), this is another one of those rules which is enforced incredibly selectively. If it weren't, half the cars on Capitol hill would be in impound.
What are the owners of those cars supposed to do? Repark them, when there is no parking available? The residential buildings there don't have enough parking spots[1].
This isn't Soviet Russia, it's not like I'll get an extra ration and a pat on the back for turning my neighbour in.
[1] This has gotten better since they've added a parking permit requirement.
What? They are supposed to find longterm parking if they want to leave their car sitting useless for days at a time, not use public space for it. And if they are regularly not needing their car for days at a time and they're unwilling to pay for storage, maybe they should get rid of it and find another way to take their weekly ski trip.
>Shaffer also ruled the fees the city required Long, 58, to pay to retrieve the truck were too high, violating constitutional protections against excessive fines.
This is really good for anyone who owns a towing and impound company in Seattle.
Imagine the situation.
The only property that you have is a truck. You get out of money and cannot afford gas anymore, so for 72h straight your truck stay parked in some street. The city notices this and impound your vehicle. Now you have to:
1. Pay for the time your vehicle is in city deposit and the fine
2. Do nothing and wait for your vehicle got auctioned.
You end up with the second option because you don't have any money (or the car wouldn't be impounded in first place).
So you now have: a fine to pay and no car.
for 72h straight your truck stay parked in some street
That's misrepresenting the facts. He may have been there for weeks; the article didn't say. What it does say is:
"When officers saw the truck, which was not operable, they called a city parking enforcement officer, who tagged it and told Long he had to move it within 72 hours (of the tagging)... Long tore off the impound sticker... and left the truck in place. The parking officer waited at least four days before having the vehicle towed, giving Long extra time to buy a part needed to get it running. When the enforcement officer returned Oct. 12, the truck was still there but Long was not, and the vehicle was towed."
The officers didn't know initially that it was outright inoperable. Simply pushing the vehicle (or having it pushed) to the next adjacent space complies with the letter of the law; he may have volunteered that it was inoperable hoping for an empathetic extension (which he received), yet he still didn't move or fix it. Since its release, it's right back on the street, inoperable.
There is a significant segment of American society that believes that if you are poor you must have done something to deserve it, like not work hard enough. Because of this, to help poor people is to subsidize (and hence encourage) laziness, and that is unacceptable. On the other hand, we can't just shoot all the poor people (though we can shoot some of them, as long as they're black and threatening) and we can't just have them loitering in the streets because that's bad for business. So the best we can do it run them out of town on a rail. Out of sight, not our problem any more, that's good enough. We don't need a long-term solution, we just need to stave off disaster long enough for Jesus to return, and that will be Real Soon Now.
Sadly, this is not an exaggeration. Tens of millions of Americans really do believe all of the above.
Because there can be very high qualifications for some of them? Medicare is not applied uniformly, and you might get a random price for what you get. Medicaid is a social safety net, but that's a last ditch thing and very few providers take it. I'm not sure what it would take to qualify for section 8, but I think it has a long waiting list and some high qualifications like having just about nothing.
More white men die being shot by police, per violent crime rate, than black men. Please stop spreading convenient lies. This isn't about poor black people being shot for racist sport. This is about a disproportionate number of violent criminals being confronted by police.
I'm not even sure why you felt compelled to bring it up.
By the way, the first 3 pages on google for searching "white police deaths" yielded exclusively results discussing disproportionate black deaths per capita, ignoring crime rate. I had to go to duckduckgo to find a single source which discussed the truth. Before you accuse me of confirmation bias, take a look at the actual statistics, please.
The "truth" is typically not exclusively found on clickbait blogspam. If what you say is factual then the stats should be easy to compute using primary sources; provide that or maybe rethink your views.
The article I posted synthesizes its primary conclusion from two biased sources:
1.>According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black
2.>But as Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country
Because of the agenda of the media featured on google (wapo, huffpo, et all), it is left to the readers to compile these two sets of data and infer that, if we take the disproportionate confrontation rate for assaults alone, per capita it would explain why more black people appear to be dying.
I don't have time to provide you with a statistical analysis, just note that the sources for this data should be "legitimate," especially when they effextively lie through omission by selectively reporting data to further their pre-drawn conclusion.
It's pretty clear you're not arguing in good faith; but, for the sake of anyone that happens upon your post, just going to enumerate a subset of your weak assumptions.
--Restrict crime stats to 75 counties (ie major cities) without also restricting fatal shootings
--Assuming population ratios are constant among those counties as compared to the wider nation (required to generate percapita)
--Not addressing the issue of scale between your two data sets. I don't know for certain, but I'd wager the number of violent crime incidents is at least an order of magnitude greater than the number of police fatal shootings.
--Related to the population point above but not accounting for potential inequalities in the who is charged in which counties.
You don't have "time" to provide a comprehensive statistical analysis because doing it right is nontrivial and very likely isn't going to conform to the views you spent so long searching the net to validate.
I was describing the mental state of a segment of American society. The particular segment I'm referring to often has views that are detached from facts.
No, I was not advancing a straw man. A straw man is an intentional mis-statement of an opponent's argument (e.g. "We can't be descended from moneys because there are still monkeys"). That's not what I was doing. I was making a straightforward claim about what is believed by a significant portion of American society. That claim might be wrong, but it's not a straw man.
The article you linked cherry picks statistics for metropolitan areas (it seems to lump the poor and African American parts of New York with the richer are more white sections) and the article even mentions that unarmed black men are much more likely to be shot and their argument for why that is seems largely anecdotal so the statistics seem less clear than what you linked would imply
> More white men die being shot by police, per violent crime rate, than black men.
What's this statistic even supposed to mean? It looks like you're dividing an absolute number by a per-capita rate but never adjusting for a higher base population of whites in America.
I believe there are logical holes in the article posted.
> According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or "were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force," according to Mac Donald in a speech at Hillsdale College.
>
> Some may argue that these statistics are evidence of racist treatment toward blacks, since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks make up 13 percent of the population. But as Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.
This is saying that while cops shoot more blacks than the population would indicate, we also arrest them at a higher rate. Because they are arrested at a higher rate, we would expect the shooting rate to be high b/c they have a higher-than-population-level-would-indicate interaction with police.
So.. it's unclear as to whether there's selection bias here. Are blacks given disproportionate police contact which increases arrest rate (aka differential exposure)? This would also lead to the same circular logic.
In there, it says the rate of each stage of the prison pipeline is approximately the same across race. So to explain why 4x the number of black people are in the pipeline than the population would point to the pre-sentencing side of the world.
Doing the math for 2017 (using population demographics from 2016 since those are the most recent) we find:
Of the total 987 deaths by police for 2017
Caucasian - 2016 percentage of pop: 76.9 * 987 would be: 759 This group total was actually: 457 or 46.3%
African American - 2016 percentage of pop: 13.3 * 987 would be: 131 This group total was actually: 223 or 22.6%
That is a significant difference and nowhere near in line with population percentages. There may be some stories behind the shootings as the article you link to mentions. However, that article is relying on an article at the Marshall Project which was written by Heather Mac Donald who is the author of a book called "The War on Cops". A quick search on this shows quite a few articles claiming bias.
It took just 20 minutes of following sources and looking at available data to come to the conclusion that there are biases in your statements and sources. please do some more research and math in the future.
On the other hand, tens of millions of Americans also take the polar opposite stance:
Nobody is responsible for anything. If anyone is in a bad circumstance (health, money, job, housing, debt, drugs, addiction, abortion, sex, crime) it was not their fault; it can't be. It was therefore a failure of the system, and therefore the system needs to fix it. Either they didn't get the proper mental health care they needed, physical health care, or education, or <insert system failure>.
The liberal philosophy in general is that people don't need to be responsible for anything, ever:
- Irresponsible sex? Fix it with a free abortion
- Irresponsible diet? Fix it with free healthcare
- Irresponsible drug use? Fix it with free rehab
- Committed a crime? Must be a mental issue, fix it with free mental healthcare.
The liberal mindset is to fix every societal issue with free services, free money, free _____, personal responsibility be darned. Cut off your own arm because you have body integrity identity disorder? The gov't should pay for a prosthetic and therapy!
I don't see anyone in that article who holds the views you describe. There aren't even any opinions mentioned in the article, liberal or otherwise. Did you share the wrong link?
It's an article about criminals trying to game the system in court: the disingenuous insanity plea has been a feature of Hollywood court dramas and other movies forever. There's nothing new here.
Here is a nice quote from the article though:
> “This is such a fraught area, and it’s prone to hype and overstatement,”
1. Should abortion be free and accessible to all women (personal responsibility be darned)?
2. Should rehab be free and accessible to everyone (personal responsibility be darned)?
3. Should healthcare be free and accessible to everyone (personal responsibility be darned)?
4. Should financial assistance be free and accessible to the poor (personal responsibility be darned)?
The part in parenthesis is implied, but every liberal I've spoken with answers yes to all 4. Doesn't matter if you are a smoking, obese, promiscuous gambler by choice, by golly you should be entitled to free healthcare, rehab, abortion services and welfare.
This assertion nullifies your point. The part in parenthesis is obviously in no way implied, and is just hyperbolic rhetoric in an attempt to create a strawman. If you're interested in reasonable debate, I would suggest refraining from such tactics.
Words like "unconditional", "universal", "everyone", "all", etc. absolutely imply that personal responsibility is not a factor.
Give me an example of a liberal stance of one of the above issues that factors in personal responsibility. Hint: none of them do because universal healthcare* (*except for obese people and drug abusers and other people that didn't take care of their bodies) would be very unpopular. Ditto for all other services/stances.
> Words like "unconditional", "universal", "everyone", "all", etc. absolutely imply that personal responsibility is not a factor.
If you think so, I think you're somewhat missing the point. Or arguing against one that isn't there.
To take your assertion to its logical end:
- system provides "universal" healthcare
- the above system therefore excuses personal responsibility for... healthcare access existing? I'm not really sure where this leads?
What you seem to be assuming is that an "irresponsible" actor impinges on service provision by virtue of their irresponsibility. Believe it or not, this is not an assumption rooted in reality. If it were, the US per capita healthcare budget would be much lower than that of France.
I'd say that the presence of those words implies a practical desire to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater in the name of an absurd moralistic bogeyman invented by the sort of right-wing goblins who e.g. work to defund Planned Parenthood with one hand while pushing moronic abstinence-only sex "education" with the other.
It still amazes me how politicians who practically wear their absurd hypocrisies on their sleeves can manipulate entire population segments with this sort of puerile garbage.
So by your definition, a non-liberal would answer:
1. No, you can't have an abortion for any reason (rape, abuse, etc.). OR do you mean you can have one, as long as you can afford it.
2. You can't have rehab for any reason it's your fault for doing something dumb. OR is it that you can go to rehab only if you can afford it.
3. You can't have healthcare for any reason. OR is it that you can have healthcare if you can afford it. OR is it only free if you aren't overweight, sit too much, stand too much, floss twice daily and only ever eat fruits and veggies.
4. Financial assistance should only be accessible to the rich. Or is it meant to be accessible to the poor, but they must pay for it?
Certainly, most people, even gasp liberals, tend to ride some middle ground.
> So by your definition, a non-liberal would answer:
1. Abortion is only acceptable in the cases of rape and the mother's life being in danger. Abortion as post-pregnancy contraceptive is totally unacceptable. The correct course is to mandate adoption (in the case the mother doesn't want it) instead, expand adoption opportunity and lower adoption barrier to entry.
2. Patients going through rehab should not simply receive it for free. They should have to "give back" by helping the next generation of addicts via volunteer work.
3. Healthcare should be subsidized more for those who strive to live healthy lives. The people that eat right, exercise, etc, should have higher priority at the doctor and more healthcare-related benefits than people who are overweight, non-exercising, drug-abusing, etc.
4. Financial assistance should not be unconditional. It should be accessible only after the the applicant has gone through financial counselling and taken steps to become more responsible over their finances, learned to budget and eliminate waste from their expenses.
That is how to keep people accountable for their actions while also providing a way out.
I feel like I'm being trolled, but the answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes, because I, a progressive, don't give a shit what people do with their lives.
I, a progressive, value personal freedom and want society to support that.
What choices people make with their one shot on earth is up to them. If a handful make choices I don't agree with, I don't give a shit--they're still people are as deserving of the social safety net as anyone.
And that's what it comes down to. I don't care if people make choices I don't agree with. It's their choice, their body, their whatever. Society should work for them as much as it does me, or it's a shitty society.
> What choices people make with their one shot on earth is up to them.
Yet you also want me to subsidize the fixing of any consequences related to poor choices, no? In other words "Do whatever the heck you want. If you do something incredibly stupid, everyone will help you recover whether they want to or not."
> It's their choice, their body, their whatever.
But it's my tax money that will bail them out of the hole they get themselves in. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The liberal mindset does not reward personal responsibly - it punishes it. The responsible people have to foot the bill of the irresponsible.
I exactly want your tax dollars to subsidize behaviors you don't approve of. (Not relevant, but mine sure do, in the form of subsidies, funding the military, paying for the militarization of police, etc.) I want all of us to pay into a social safety net that doesn't discriminate.
I have absolutely zero sympathy to this repeated use of this phrase you love, "personal responsibility." Society is all about shared responsibility, and you'd do well to learn that.
I think you ruined your point at the end there by implying this attitude is unique to those that are religious. It definitely isn't and the "fuck poor" sentiment runs deep throughout every part of western culture.
The connection is of course famously the theme of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism[1], so it might be more accurate to say the origin of the attitude was religious, but it has now become more widespread.
The sentiment is hardly unique to western culture either. Off the top of my head the Hindu Caste System seems like a pretty good example of a system that excuses the mistreatment of the poor.
Throughout "western culture"? No, I contend that such a sentiment is particularly prevalent in the USA. Countries in Europe, Canada and Australia among others, do not share such a view.
Yes, that's true. But there really is a shocking percentage of Americans who really do believe that no long term thinking is needed because the Second Coming is imminent.
When I think of charity in my city, I have soup kitchen, run by church, adult day care run by another church, drug clinic run by church, habitat humanity branch, another church, probably a lot I am missing since I'm not a churchy person. I think there are some nonsecular like Kiwanis and Lions also.
This study shows religious tend to donate more to charity.
BTW, can you please clarify for me exactly what it was about my comment that crossed the line? Was it the actual content, or just the editorialized phraseology ("real soon now"). Because it is simply a fact that a significant fraction of American society really does believe that there is no need to address any long term problems because the Second Coming is imminent. If I had phrased it like that, would that have been OK?
Thinking like a politician, one of the implications might be- since we can count a car as a home, all the people living out of their cars aren't homeless anymore. With this huge reduction in homeless people we can cut the budget to the shelters because they are serving fewer people. They'll definitely win re-election because they simultaneously reduced homelessness and cut spending, and they didn't even have to put forth any effort. Total win for the politicians.
This makes sense and it's good for the courts to step in on this. The point of the law is clearly that there's a limit to how much the government can take from a person which is fair and just. There needs to be a rational-thinking person in the room who knows it's wrong to take away a person's car when they're currently living out of it because of economic troubles. It's always good when common sense and decency wins out in a court of law.
"If your neighbor is poor and gives you his cloak as security for a loan, do not keep the cloak overnight. Return the cloak to its owner by sunset so he can stay warm through the night"
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadIn some places, the homeless quite commonly register intersections or similar locations as their stationary home location. Then things like notices are delivered to them there. This, as grandparent implies, is not so straightforward with a mobile vehicle.
What does that leave? A requirement to constantly update your location of record with local government? Overbearing surveillance to track the homeless so government can reach them? All-electronic systems relying on devices and services the homeless almost certainly can't afford? None of these are great solutions. All are clearly problematic, in the damning social justice sense.
Again, you're completely correct. We need to admit, accept, acknowledge, and embrace our unhoused friends and neighbors. It's just possible that a truck and a tent under a bridge might pose slightly different levels of difficulty for addressing-type needs.
What about those that don't?
You don't have to be homeless to lack a permanent address.
Those who have relative means will often maintain a mailbox of some sort. There are services that accept mail and scan it for you and other ways. Few of which are available to the homeless, due generally to a lack of financial means.
Lacking a real permanent address doesn't inherently make you uncontactable by governments. It's the combination of lacking a permanent address and lacking the means to work around it that creates a perfect storm.
Also, this ruling isn't precedential, because it's not in a court of appeals. Practically speaking, this means it only really applies to this single case, and possibly other Washington state courtrooms, but nowhere else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domicile_(law)#United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residence
For example, you can use a mailbox service if you live out of your car.
EDIT: I misunderstood the point, sorry
The submission links to an article at fox13memphis.com. The user I'm replying to suggests a "much better" article at seattletimes.com because it includes content which I'm pointing out is already contained at the submission link.
I'm still puzzled at how our society affirms our Right to Life, while simultaneously affirming food, water, and shelter as Essential to Life, yet will never make the logical conclusion that food/water/shelter are necessarily included in our right to life.
1. All men are entitled to life.
2. Food, water, and shelter are essential to life.
3. Fuck you, get a job or freeze to death.
the nth order effects of these programs need to be considered.
I think negative rights are the way to go. Once you start having positive rights, then you place obligations on others which ultimately require force or the threat of force to make people do something. In addition, positive rights has a tendency to keep on growing - for example a right to Internet access. The downside of that is that rights then do not become something that is stable across time and space but just a synonym for something someone arbitrarily decided to call a right.
Which the government conveniently forgets.
The government is quite aware - and works within the framework established for it. It's up to us as citizens to challenge it (or remove it) if we feel it isn't abiding by the rules.
Sadly, most of the populace can't even be bothered to vote, let alone stay engaged on these issues.
I see rights as those things that most people would not give up in order to have their rights protected by society. The right not to be hit for no reason is valued by most people. But having a right to hit anybody you want is not more highly valued by most people, as it also means you will be hit a lot.
That doesn't mean people shouldn't help each other or accept help or participate in mutual aid associations. But such voluntary aid has CONDITIONS. You have to be a decent person to get it. A right to help doesn't require good behavior.
And compulsory help is not practical either. Eventually, costs of providing it rise until quality has to be sacrificed and options have to be limited and often the opportunity cost of the free help is greater than the cost of paying for it yourself.
Do you see this as the same as the golden rule?
Mandatory reporting laws throw a crimp in this logic--for various sorts of crimes, some or all people may be obligated to report these crimes depending on state/federal laws as well as their profession. At least 18 states have no restrictions on profession, meaning anyone suspecting crimes such as child abuse is obligated to report.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/manda.pdf#Page=1&view=F...
Enforceability isn't something I'd know. Just making a point that we have plenty of cases where people are obligated to go out of their way to save someone else's life.
TIL: There is no concept of "Duty to rescue" in most Common Law countries such as the US. Seems really strange.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue)
Until people understand that personal responsibility doesn't stop people from falling into poverty, these issues will continue.
Could greater personal responsibility have kept everyone out of homelessness? highly unlikely.
For every person who is able to climb up using their bootstraps, as they say, are more resources freed up to help those who truly can't help themselves? Yes!
And that money has to come from somewhere. The poor need a lot of helping hands (most people are a few paychecks away from living under a bridge) but a blank guarantee of food, shelter and utilities is not, IMO, the right way.
Give fish vs. teach them fishing.
Sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, but there needs to be enforcement of laws and respect to the neighborhood that you are living in, whether or not you are homeless.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/meeting-draws-hund...
It's not fair to the residents of the neighborhood, or people living in vehicles that are respecting the law and minding their own business.
http://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-business-owner-frust...
Do you see that you're putting a value judgement on ownership of a home and attributing them with some ownership of the "neighborhood" while denying that broader sense of ownership to people choosing to reside in that neighborhood in their vehicles?
That's, if true, entirely the fault of how your state allocates revenue from vehicle license fees, not the people living in (currently licensed) cars.
I didn't say anything about the level of VLFs, I said something about the distribution of funds raised thereby.
But, yes, it's zero-sum: but if vehicles that are used more as houses are having tax revenue distributed as if they were being used more as transport, then people sleeping in cars are subsidizing drivers.
The reality is the law, as always, is lagging behind reality. Things have changed substantially in the last few decades in terms of how realistic it is to live a fairly normal and connected life from a vehicle. There is essentially no practical need for a mailing address or land line anymore for example, smart phones, internet, efficient solar panels...
Drug addicts/cooks living in squalor who happen to be in vehicles will be committing myriad obvious and easily policed crimes. Why those police are not doing their job is entirely orthogonal to if a vehicle should be considered a potential legal residence.
What incentive do people have to not lie about that? When someone loses their home, are they obligated to go to the DMV and update their registration and throw in a bunch of extra money? How do you police this? Do you have the police capacity to handle this?
How do you enforce violations? If someone is living in their car but didn't pay the registration, do you tow their car? Doesn't that get right back to the original problem?
> This could even translate into states providing facilities for pump outs and showers for those registered for vehicle dwellings to improve the sanitation of what's going to be happening regardless.
In the Seattle area, at least, there are free RV hookups for people to dump their waste. Many people just don't use them. Their vehicle may not actually be that driveable, or maybe they can't afford the gas, or maybe they simply don't care.
> There is essentially no practical need for a mailing address or land line anymore for example, smart phones, internet, efficient solar panels...
Yes, a well-adjusted, committed person can leave reasonably from a vehicle. But what about the people who live in vehicles in part because they aren't doing the work required to keep the social contract and be a participating member of society?
> Drug addicts/cooks living in squalor who happen to be in vehicles will be committing myriad obvious and easily policed crimes.
Many of these crimes aren't easily policed, actually. Drug possession requires a warrant to search a vehicle. Finding discarded paraphernalia isn't enough, nor is a witnessing drug use. Littering and waste dumping are almost impossible to police — you have to be caught in the act by a police officer.
Ignoring that, the reality is that Seattle isn't policing these.
My point is that it's a reasonable stance for people who contribute to the upkeep of a neighborhood in the form of property taxes to have a greater claim to that neighborhood than people who decided that it would be a good place to park their car or camp for the night. Not sure if you live in a neighborhood where people regularly camp out and live out of their cars, but I do and there are tons of problems with it:
1. At a fundamental level, it is unfair. People who own or rent homes in the neighborhood spend lots of money (our property taxes are $600/month) in order to contribute to the the upkeep of the neighborhood. They also generally clean up after themselves and don't steal stuff.
2. People who own or rent are also tied to the neighborhood in a way that people who camp or live in cars are not. If the neighborhood goes to shit, it's easy to pull up camp or start your car and leave; you can be out in a few hours. If you rent, it's at least a few months to find a new place to live. For homeowners, you could be looking at years, plus many thousands of dollars in broker and moving costs.
3. It's not just that homeowners contribute to the well being of the neighborhood, it's that people who camp and live in cars actively do the opposite. After the city of Portland clears the regular camping spots in my neighborhood, a team of cleaners has to come in to dispose of waste. Many people, and thus, much taxpayer expense is involved. This happens every 6-8 weeks. Guess how many times the city has ever had to clean up in a similar way after homeowners... zero.
4. But it's more than just the clean up. Campers bring tons of crime with them. There is a tent at the campsite down the street from me that is actually a bicycle chop shop! And then there's the stolen cars that get stripped and abandoned in our neighborhood on a weekly basis when there is an active campsite. Oh, and there are tons of hypodermic needles all over the ground near the campsites.
So, yeah, I think it's pretty legitimate to not think it's fair for people who follow the rules, work hard, and contribute to society to have to watch their neighborhood get torn apart by people who are A) completely uninvested in the wellbeing of the neighborhood, and B) actively contributing to it's decline.
Being a citizen is not a license to do whatever you want. Nobody argues that people should be able to ignore posted parking restrictions when it suits them. Yet the negative externalities from people camping and living in their cars are way more significant than from parking in a loading zone or not paying the meter. Just ask anybody who lives in a neighborhood with a significant homeless presence.
No, they aren't, mostly. There are probably a few that are conscientious, but over the past years, almost every RV that's gone through my neighborhood has brought problems with it.
Part of living in physical housing is that there are sewer lines to it and trash pick-up. RVs and cars don't have that. Most of those denizens are not driving halfway across town to drain their blackwater tanks or paying to dispose of their trash. Instead, the dump it out on the street before relocating.
In addition to the obvious health risk of literal human shit being dumped on the street and grass, that trash more often than not contains used needles, used toilet paper, and other dangerous stuff.
On top of that:
1. Along with piles of trash that had been jammed into the bushes, my neighbor found a discarded gun. (Fortunately he found it before his toddler did.)
2. My wife interrupted someone squatting and shitting on the ground in our alley. Multiple times.
3. We see and hear screaming matches and fights between people in and near RVs on a pretty regular basis.
4. Property theft is constant. Most of us don't ship things to our homes anymore. One friend has a giant bin with a lock on it for package delivery people to lock things in.
5. Our car has been broken into twice.
6. Someone once climbed our back fence and was wandering around the yard babbling incoherently.
7. A gas can was stolen out of the back of my truck.
> How do you know the people living in homes are respecting the law?
Let's not play the whataboutism game. That won't solve any problems.
The people living in their vehicles need real help. The city (and the country at large) has profound systemic problems around inequality, housing, healthcare, and drug addiction.
Pretending that the people living in their vehicles are law-abiding citizens whose homes happen to have wheels denies the full reality of their experience. Most of them, in addition to experiencing homelessness, are also experiencing drug addiction, often have mental illness, and are living in an environment that lacks the sewage and trash infrastructure needed for humans to live safely.
All of that needs to be addressed. These aren't just free spirits living the dream out of their VW bus. (If they do want to do that, more power to them. But they still gotta find a place for their shit and trash.)
When examining the causes and effects of issue that you'd rather not take place in your neighborhood it is essential to look at all the intersections of those issues and look at other situations where those issues are also present.
If you don't recognize the fact that a majority of those issues you listed are committed most frequently by traditionally housed people, in other neighborhood than your own, then you'll be blind to the larger systemic issues that need to be addressed to fix the problems. You'll also be much more likely to support a short-term solution that fixes your problems but not the larger problem.
I certainly didn't depersonalize or "deplatform" people.
> If you don't recognize the fact that a majority of those issues you listed are committed most frequently by traditionally housed people, in other neighborhood than your own, then you'll be blind to the larger systemic issues that need to be addressed to fix the problems.
I certainly never claimed homeless people are the only ones who commit crimes, but I am pretty confident that the homed neighbors around me do not get into screaming matches in the street, shit in my alley, jam trash in my bushes, or dump blackwater on the street.
It's not because they're better people. It's because they have access to sewers, trash pickup, and soundproof walls. Any "solution" for homeless people that lets them continue to live in an environment without the physical infrastructure — shelter, sanitation, and trash — needed to live safely isn't a real solution.
http://mynorthwest.com/152391/seattle-business-shoots-video-...?
Certainly, there is no practical way to enforce not littering. Are you going to have undercover cops patrolling around waiting for someone to drop something on the ground?
I live in a formerly-quiet neighborhood in Seattle. When my kids were 4 and 6, I had to teach them what a used needle looks like and to never ever touch one because trash like that started showing up on our street corner near parked RVs.
1. There are definitely some people living in vehicles that are not part of the drug trade as consumers and producers, and I'm very sympathetic to their plight, and supportive of them living in their vehicles if that's all they can afford.
2. There are definitely people living in vehicles that are drug addicts. I'm sympathetic to their plight, but it doesn't seem like letting them live without treatment is good for them or the surrounding community. This is a profoundly hard problem — how as a society do we deal with people whose addiction prevents them from making good life choices and upholding the social contract? How much agency should someone have when they use that agency to harm themselves and others?
3. There are definitely people living in vehicles that are drug producers and sellers. They should go to jail.
People who have strong opinions on this seem to believe only one of those categories exists, and then imagine solutions that deny the existence of the others. That's not practical. My experience from my street is that there are all three kinds, though unfortunately not many in the first group.
I care about the rights and life of people in these dire straits, but I also care about my own rights and those of my family. I'd like my children to be able to play in the yard without worrying about them rolling onto a dirty needle. I'd like my wife to be able to garden without finding trash and sewage in the bushes.
Even if someone is 100% supportive of letting people experiencing homelessness get by however they can, I hope they understand that it's not biologically safe for humans to live in areas without sewage and trash infrastructure. That's how you get cholera, hepatitis, etc.
wow, how widely is this belief held? is there a name for it?
It's not a particularly popular model, even though it was influential in developing views that remain popular today.
To put it another way, the people living in RV's are also residents of the neighborhoods and they are not homeless, just houseless.
Doubtful, if you have to sat "I am x but" that means you understand you are about to disprove your own position
Like saying "I support freedom of speech but..." No you do not...
>>there needs to be enforcement of laws and respect to the neighborhood that you are living in, whether or not you are homeless.
There needs to be respect for the individual and if a person is not causing physical harm to another person they need to be left alone.
"Respect" is a nebulous subjective concept that the government has no business attempting to enforce with law
"The Law" is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
Judging by the amount of leaves, gunk, and other crap that accumulates underneath the parked cars on my street (Which were also in the same place day, after day, after day), this is another one of those rules which is enforced incredibly selectively. If it weren't, half the cars on Capitol hill would be in impound.
This isn't Soviet Russia, it's not like I'll get an extra ration and a pat on the back for turning my neighbour in.
[1] This has gotten better since they've added a parking permit requirement.
This is really good for anyone who owns a towing and impound company in Seattle.
1. Pay for the time your vehicle is in city deposit and the fine
2. Do nothing and wait for your vehicle got auctioned.
You end up with the second option because you don't have any money (or the car wouldn't be impounded in first place). So you now have: a fine to pay and no car.
And no place to live.
But asylumseekers and refugees get some money from the state they are doing the legal asylum/refugee process.
Oh, and you can push a car by human strength. Preferably at night, to somewhere else.
"When officers saw the truck, which was not operable, they called a city parking enforcement officer, who tagged it and told Long he had to move it within 72 hours (of the tagging)... Long tore off the impound sticker... and left the truck in place. The parking officer waited at least four days before having the vehicle towed, giving Long extra time to buy a part needed to get it running. When the enforcement officer returned Oct. 12, the truck was still there but Long was not, and the vehicle was towed."
The officers didn't know initially that it was outright inoperable. Simply pushing the vehicle (or having it pushed) to the next adjacent space complies with the letter of the law; he may have volunteered that it was inoperable hoping for an empathetic extension (which he received), yet he still didn't move or fix it. Since its release, it's right back on the street, inoperable.
Sadly, this is not an exaggeration. Tens of millions of Americans really do believe all of the above.
Then I was thinking "What happens if tomorrow I get injured and cannot work for 12 months".
- I lose my place of living because I can't afford the bills
- I move into my parent's house
- My family loses their health insurance entirely.
- I have to pay for COBRA... but I don't have a job...
- I may need to take out loans to just get by for some time till I can get my health back in order.
Yeah we have ZERO social safety nets.
I'm not even sure why you felt compelled to bring it up.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-kn...
By the way, the first 3 pages on google for searching "white police deaths" yielded exclusively results discussing disproportionate black deaths per capita, ignoring crime rate. I had to go to duckduckgo to find a single source which discussed the truth. Before you accuse me of confirmation bias, take a look at the actual statistics, please.
1.>According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black
2.>But as Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country
Because of the agenda of the media featured on google (wapo, huffpo, et all), it is left to the readers to compile these two sets of data and infer that, if we take the disproportionate confrontation rate for assaults alone, per capita it would explain why more black people appear to be dying.
I don't have time to provide you with a statistical analysis, just note that the sources for this data should be "legitimate," especially when they effextively lie through omission by selectively reporting data to further their pre-drawn conclusion.
--Restrict crime stats to 75 counties (ie major cities) without also restricting fatal shootings
--Assuming population ratios are constant among those counties as compared to the wider nation (required to generate percapita) --Not addressing the issue of scale between your two data sets. I don't know for certain, but I'd wager the number of violent crime incidents is at least an order of magnitude greater than the number of police fatal shootings.
--Related to the population point above but not accounting for potential inequalities in the who is charged in which counties.
You don't have "time" to provide a comprehensive statistical analysis because doing it right is nontrivial and very likely isn't going to conform to the views you spent so long searching the net to validate.
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
What's this statistic even supposed to mean? It looks like you're dividing an absolute number by a per-capita rate but never adjusting for a higher base population of whites in America.
> According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or "were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force," according to Mac Donald in a speech at Hillsdale College. > > Some may argue that these statistics are evidence of racist treatment toward blacks, since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks make up 13 percent of the population. But as Mac Donald writes in The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.
This is saying that while cops shoot more blacks than the population would indicate, we also arrest them at a higher rate. Because they are arrested at a higher rate, we would expect the shooting rate to be high b/c they have a higher-than-population-level-would-indicate interaction with police.
So.. it's unclear as to whether there's selection bias here. Are blacks given disproportionate police contact which increases arrest rate (aka differential exposure)? This would also lead to the same circular logic.
In Portland, Oregon, where I live, there was a report tracking different ethnicities through the criminal justice system called the Relative Rate Index. Article about it: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/02/blacks_... and source: http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impact/other/RRI%20Repo...
In there, it says the rate of each stage of the prison pipeline is approximately the same across race. So to explain why 4x the number of black people are in the pipeline than the population would point to the pre-sentencing side of the world.
Of the total 987 deaths by police for 2017 Caucasian - 2016 percentage of pop: 76.9 * 987 would be: 759 This group total was actually: 457 or 46.3% African American - 2016 percentage of pop: 13.3 * 987 would be: 131 This group total was actually: 223 or 22.6%
That is a significant difference and nowhere near in line with population percentages. There may be some stories behind the shootings as the article you link to mentions. However, that article is relying on an article at the Marshall Project which was written by Heather Mac Donald who is the author of a book called "The War on Cops". A quick search on this shows quite a few articles claiming bias.
It took just 20 minutes of following sources and looking at available data to come to the conclusion that there are biases in your statements and sources. please do some more research and math in the future.
Also, as posted below, this information can be inferred from two popular left leaning media outlets, in addition to raw FBI statistics.
Nobody is responsible for anything. If anyone is in a bad circumstance (health, money, job, housing, debt, drugs, addiction, abortion, sex, crime) it was not their fault; it can't be. It was therefore a failure of the system, and therefore the system needs to fix it. Either they didn't get the proper mental health care they needed, physical health care, or education, or <insert system failure>.
I'm sure plenty of Americans that I have not encountered do think this, but they are in a negligible, near-non-existent minority.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/my-brain-made-me-...
The liberal philosophy in general is that people don't need to be responsible for anything, ever:
- Irresponsible sex? Fix it with a free abortion
- Irresponsible diet? Fix it with free healthcare
- Irresponsible drug use? Fix it with free rehab
- Committed a crime? Must be a mental issue, fix it with free mental healthcare.
The liberal mindset is to fix every societal issue with free services, free money, free _____, personal responsibility be darned. Cut off your own arm because you have body integrity identity disorder? The gov't should pay for a prosthetic and therapy!
It's an article about criminals trying to game the system in court: the disingenuous insanity plea has been a feature of Hollywood court dramas and other movies forever. There's nothing new here.
Here is a nice quote from the article though:
> “This is such a fraught area, and it’s prone to hype and overstatement,”
1. Should abortion be free and accessible to all women (personal responsibility be darned)?
2. Should rehab be free and accessible to everyone (personal responsibility be darned)?
3. Should healthcare be free and accessible to everyone (personal responsibility be darned)?
4. Should financial assistance be free and accessible to the poor (personal responsibility be darned)?
The part in parenthesis is implied, but every liberal I've spoken with answers yes to all 4. Doesn't matter if you are a smoking, obese, promiscuous gambler by choice, by golly you should be entitled to free healthcare, rehab, abortion services and welfare.
This assertion nullifies your point. The part in parenthesis is obviously in no way implied, and is just hyperbolic rhetoric in an attempt to create a strawman. If you're interested in reasonable debate, I would suggest refraining from such tactics.
Give me an example of a liberal stance of one of the above issues that factors in personal responsibility. Hint: none of them do because universal healthcare* (*except for obese people and drug abusers and other people that didn't take care of their bodies) would be very unpopular. Ditto for all other services/stances.
If you think so, I think you're somewhat missing the point. Or arguing against one that isn't there.
To take your assertion to its logical end:
- system provides "universal" healthcare
- the above system therefore excuses personal responsibility for... healthcare access existing? I'm not really sure where this leads?
What you seem to be assuming is that an "irresponsible" actor impinges on service provision by virtue of their irresponsibility. Believe it or not, this is not an assumption rooted in reality. If it were, the US per capita healthcare budget would be much lower than that of France.
It still amazes me how politicians who practically wear their absurd hypocrisies on their sleeves can manipulate entire population segments with this sort of puerile garbage.
1. No, you can't have an abortion for any reason (rape, abuse, etc.). OR do you mean you can have one, as long as you can afford it.
2. You can't have rehab for any reason it's your fault for doing something dumb. OR is it that you can go to rehab only if you can afford it.
3. You can't have healthcare for any reason. OR is it that you can have healthcare if you can afford it. OR is it only free if you aren't overweight, sit too much, stand too much, floss twice daily and only ever eat fruits and veggies.
4. Financial assistance should only be accessible to the rich. Or is it meant to be accessible to the poor, but they must pay for it?
Certainly, most people, even gasp liberals, tend to ride some middle ground.
1. Abortion is only acceptable in the cases of rape and the mother's life being in danger. Abortion as post-pregnancy contraceptive is totally unacceptable. The correct course is to mandate adoption (in the case the mother doesn't want it) instead, expand adoption opportunity and lower adoption barrier to entry.
2. Patients going through rehab should not simply receive it for free. They should have to "give back" by helping the next generation of addicts via volunteer work.
3. Healthcare should be subsidized more for those who strive to live healthy lives. The people that eat right, exercise, etc, should have higher priority at the doctor and more healthcare-related benefits than people who are overweight, non-exercising, drug-abusing, etc.
4. Financial assistance should not be unconditional. It should be accessible only after the the applicant has gone through financial counselling and taken steps to become more responsible over their finances, learned to budget and eliminate waste from their expenses.
That is how to keep people accountable for their actions while also providing a way out.
I, a progressive, value personal freedom and want society to support that.
What choices people make with their one shot on earth is up to them. If a handful make choices I don't agree with, I don't give a shit--they're still people are as deserving of the social safety net as anyone.
And that's what it comes down to. I don't care if people make choices I don't agree with. It's their choice, their body, their whatever. Society should work for them as much as it does me, or it's a shitty society.
Yet you also want me to subsidize the fixing of any consequences related to poor choices, no? In other words "Do whatever the heck you want. If you do something incredibly stupid, everyone will help you recover whether they want to or not."
> It's their choice, their body, their whatever.
But it's my tax money that will bail them out of the hole they get themselves in. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The liberal mindset does not reward personal responsibly - it punishes it. The responsible people have to foot the bill of the irresponsible.
I exactly want your tax dollars to subsidize behaviors you don't approve of. (Not relevant, but mine sure do, in the form of subsidies, funding the military, paying for the militarization of police, etc.) I want all of us to pay into a social safety net that doesn't discriminate.
I have absolutely zero sympathy to this repeated use of this phrase you love, "personal responsibility." Society is all about shared responsibility, and you'd do well to learn that.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
This study shows religious tend to donate more to charity.
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Religious-Americans-Giv...
It turns out jerks are jerks, and the church bashing is unwarranted here.
/s/Jesus/trickle down
I think that fixes it
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16531067 and marked it off-topic.
Thinking like a politician, one of the implications might be- since we can count a car as a home, all the people living out of their cars aren't homeless anymore. With this huge reduction in homeless people we can cut the budget to the shelters because they are serving fewer people. They'll definitely win re-election because they simultaneously reduced homelessness and cut spending, and they didn't even have to put forth any effort. Total win for the politicians.
"If your neighbor is poor and gives you his cloak as security for a loan, do not keep the cloak overnight. Return the cloak to its owner by sunset so he can stay warm through the night"
Deuteronomy 24:12
Now maybe taco trucks can have less stringent health codes.