{"id":383,"date":"2018-06-15T17:54:37","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T17:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/?p=383"},"modified":"2018-06-15T17:54:37","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T17:54:37","slug":"sarcastic-sentry-vol-6-1-issue-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"Sarcastic Sentry Vol 6.1 Issue 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hapless mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock believes there is no homeless problem in Denver.\u00a0 I guess he has no windows from his offices looking out over Civic Center Park.\u00a0 Go by there ANY DAY, and you will see this.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I apologize that the foreground is blurry, but driving by at 20 miles per hour or more is about the only way to keep them from coming into the street to berate<\/s> ask you for money.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Note the guy in the red poncho\/trash bag outfit.\u00a0 All of that stuff to his left and above him is his.\u00a0 Two bikes, and at least six bags of shit.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how one person rides two bikes at the same time, so one must ponder the need for the second bike, or how this guy came to be in possession of it.\u00a0 Think how long he could drink or smoke weed if only he sold one of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The huge pile in the immediate foreground belongs to another homeless.\u00a0 He keeps it covered from the rain with the big blue poncho.\u00a0 This has two immediate effects.\u00a0 His worthless crap stays dry, and the poncho kills the grass beneath it as it gets no sun or moisture.\u00a0 But it isn\u2019t HIS lawn, so he gives a shit.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This picture is at the street level in front of the state capital.\u00a0 It is an every day event.\u00a0 That is, until there is a major festival or celebration coming to town, or a charity walk or run is scheduled.\u00a0 Then you\u2019ll see police, charter buses, and trash trucks come in force.\u00a0 They load them up on buses with whatever they can carry and haul them to another part of the city.\u00a0 What is left is gathered up and thrown away.\u00a0 You get to pay for this, of course through your taxes.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that is how Hancock gets away with saying there is no homeless epidemic in Denver\u2014he ships them out to other towns and cities.\u00a0 These are the sights I personally see all across Denver, but read about in other cities across America.<\/span><\/p>\n

And most of them simply do not care about their drag on society or culture.\u00a0 They set up camps where ever it can be advantageous to them.\u00a0 They do not care about it being private property, or even a business storefront.\u00a0 And the Denver Police have been directed to not harass them, so it takes a concerted effort by property and business owners to have them removed from their place of business.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The whole thing got me thinking on the genesis of the problem.\u00a0 Homelessness.\u00a0 I\u2019ve narrowed it down to just a few catalysts.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A major life changing event<\/li>\n
  2. Drugs<\/li>\n
  3. Mental illness<\/li>\n
  4. Choice<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    By major life changing event<\/em><\/strong>, I focused on the loss of a job or primary source of income, be it the actual person\u2019s job, or that of their spouse or parent.\u00a0 It could also include the loss of the actual<\/em> spouse or parent through death, divorce, or decree (get out of my house!).\u00a0 As we age, the loss of a job can be seriously difficult to overcome but should not be unrecoverable.\u00a0 The longer one is out of work, the harder it becomes to find comparable work (or wage), so getting back on the horse is important.<\/p>\n

    Losing income has an immediate impact on lifestyle, particularly if the persons involved are like 90 percent of Americans and are living a financed lifestyle.\u00a0 If you are spending 25-40 percent of your income to pay credit cards down or other retailer\u2019s cards, you are setting yourself up for a long road of shit if you lose some of that income.\u00a0 Sometimes you can reason with the creditors for a period of time, but they are going to want their money.\u00a0 If they do agree to forego payments in the short term, you can bet that the long term pay off will be much higher.<\/p>\n

    Add to credit cards, the car payment (be it a loan or even worse, a lease), then the rent or mortgage.\u00a0 Before you know it, you are living paycheck to paycheck, with barely enough to continue, let alone eat, or be entertained. Living a life of immediate gratification is going to result in being slammed by a financial tidal wave after usually just a single hiccup.<\/p>\n

    Watch the transition here.\u00a0 Lose your job and within six months you\u2019ll likely be foreclosed and then you are living in your car, until it breaks down, gets repossessed, stolen, wrecked, or you no longer have enough money to put fuel in it.\u00a0 Clearly, you\u2019ll have no insurance on it since there is no immediate payoff making those premium payments.\u00a0 After the car, now you are lugging everything you own in a shopping cart or a bike with a trailer, or a series of rolling suitcases and back packs.\u00a0 These break, or are stolen when you sleep or check in to a homeless shelter, or through out right robbery, so your worldly possessions slowly dwindle to the fifteen pounds you can carry on your back.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    You eat out of trash cans, or beg on street corners to gain enough to get ten chicken nuggets at Burger King.\u00a0 You ask for extra sauce so you at least can eat that when you don\u2019t \u201cearn\u201d enough through the generosity of others.\u00a0 You start selling your blood until they won\u2019t take anymore.\u00a0 And somehow, in all of this, you forgot how to find a job or gave up trying, the only thing that can reverse the course.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Drugs<\/em><\/strong> are an even faster way to the street.\u00a0 The idiot feel-good politicians of Colorado are still blind to this fact.\u00a0 So tempted were they are the prospect of money for schools and extra tax revenues, they legalized marijuana use (in your own home).\u00a0 Dispensaries popped up all over the place.\u00a0 I have three along a single half mile stretch of one road within three miles of my house.\u00a0 There has even been a killing in one to steal the money generated over two days.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s another easy path to follow.\u00a0 You live in an apartment (or own a home) and you smoke weed.\u00a0 Just at your house, but you like it.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 A once or twice a week buzz turns into three or four nights a week.\u00a0 It takes more weed to get you the buzz you like so you have to spend more at the dispensary.\u00a0 You cancel Netflix in favor of the weed.\u00a0 Then you cancel Amazon Prime. Then cable altogether.<\/p>\n

    You are oblivious to the stench that comes with your high.\u00a0 It is absolutely horrendous but you are immune to it since everything you own smells like burnt rope.\u00a0 But your boss smells it.\u00a0 If you are in a job that can mandate random drug tests, you get called out, tested and piss hot.\u00a0 Depending on their policies, you may get lucky and be offered rehabilitation.\u00a0 You try it, but like the high better and you relapse.\u00a0 The boss grows weary of your lack or quality of production and lets you go.<\/p>\n

    Now you are back to the first reason listed above.\u00a0 No income, you get evicted or foreclosed. Yada, yada, cycle repeats.<\/p>\n

    Mental illness<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 This one is again multi-faceted.\u00a0 Sometimes people with an illness are cast away by family because of the pattern of violence, cost of treatment, stigma of association, any number of reasons.\u00a0 But the mentally ill are shunned away from the family or shuttled off to live with other relatives until their behavior is too much again.\u00a0 On the streets they go with absolutely no lifeline.<\/p>\n

    Another side of mental illness comes from simply being alone all the time and living on the streets.\u00a0 People, like most dogs, are social animals.\u00a0 We need supportive interaction with others.\u00a0 Many homeless I encounter talk to themselves, argue with themselves, or have conversations with their belongings, or an invisible travel mate.\u00a0 They are dirty, stink beyond belief, and so, no \u201cnormal\u201d person will interact with them.<\/p>\n

    The strong homeless prey on the weak ones, robbing them, pummeling them.\u00a0 Its only naturally for the psyche to break eventually.\u00a0 With no tether remaining to connect them to reality, they are doomed to die on the streets, hungry, cold, wet, piss-stained, and penniless.<\/p>\n

    Choice.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 This is the hardest one for me to understand and thus, condone.\u00a0 They are called the Voluntarily Vagrant– people who actually choose to have no job, rather to live off the social programs made available by liberal politicians, or by begging for money from passersby.\u00a0 These leeches decided early on that they are entitled to a living paid for by the efforts, wages, and emotions of all the rest of us.\u00a0 They do not want a job.\u00a0 They are content merely getting by, begging for food, money, selling themselves, stealing, you name it.<\/p>\n

    I have a friend who has a daughter who is a business owner.\u00a0 It is a small restaurant, doing breakfast and lunch.\u00a0 One day, she came outside her establishment to find a group of vagabonds begging for money.\u00a0 She engaged them, offering each of them a job on the spot.\u00a0 One of them could serve food, one could work the back of the place, one might even learn to cook.\u00a0 All three of them declined her offer and merely moved 200 yards away to another place to beg.\u00a0 She offered all three a lifeline to a stabile existence and they CHOSE against it.\u00a0 They don\u2019t want to work.\u00a0 They must make an acceptable or comparable income doing nothing but sucking off society.\u00a0 This is why Trump wants people to have to show an effort to get a job in order to continue receiving government assistance. (Oh, and Clinton actually started that.\u00a0 B. Hussein ended it.)<\/p>\n

    So what do we do about them?\u00a0 The feel-good liberals all want to give them hand-outs as they see them as weak, vulnerable, Democrat voters.\u00a0 The conservatives see them as drains on society, consuming, and not providing\u2014like locusts.<\/p>\n

    I always remember that sign I used to see when going into a National Park about not feeding the wild animals because they will become dependent on humans for their existence and stop hunting on their own.\u00a0 If we can\u2019t feed this set of wild animals that are unable to communicate in a language we can understand, what makes it okay to feed that set of wild animals just because they can.\u00a0 Will they not learn the same lessons about dependency and stop trying to produce for themselves?\u00a0 I know a guy who feeds a roving herd of wild deer at his farm about an hour south of me.\u00a0 Within a week, it went from one or two to the whole herd, buck, cows, and fawns.\u00a0 They all show up for the daily allotment of corn\/grain.<\/p>\n

    Look at any charity around 11 o\u2019clock in the morning and you see the same thing.\u00a0 People, not deer, and they are expecting<\/em> to be fed.\u00a0 And when they finish, just like the deer at John\u2019s barn, they leave behind what they don\u2019t want, or their own personal refuse.\u00a0 Nice repayment to your benefactor.\u00a0 Leave your trash right where you stand regardless of the abundance of trash receptacles in the area.\u00a0 Just like the providing of food for their survival, cleaning up for their comfort is left for someone else to do.<\/p>\n

    Like most productive, job-holding people in the labor force, I\u2019m trained at my job.\u00a0 Some of the training came through my career in the military, while some of it was taught to me on the job.\u00a0 And now, I trade my time doing that job in exchange for money to pay bills and buy things.\u00a0 These homeless people, whether they want to admit it or not, in all likelihood, are trained in at least one thing.\u00a0 Before they became homeless, I\u2019d bet they had at least one parent who made them clean their room.\u00a0 Thus, they are trained in the art of bending down and picking things up.<\/p>\n

    I say we make the lot of them sanitation engineers so they can put to use that skill set.\u00a0 They can police the trash in and around the same city blocks they infest and pollute in exchange for food vouchers and\/or lodging tickets.\u00a0 You are paid by how much you police.\u00a0 Sadly, we won\u2019t be able to do this purely by weight.\u00a0 It is the nature of the human beast to try to get over on any system and soon enough, these beasts will begin to add to their collection a measure of dirt or rocks to make it heavier.\u00a0 No, it\u2019ll have to be sorted and then paid by another measure.\u00a0 Volume, maybe.<\/p>\n

    I can hear the bleeding heart leftists now.\u00a0 But, they\u2019ll die.\u00a0 As Captain Kirk once said,<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Let them die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The hapless mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock believes there is no homeless problem in Denver.\u00a0 I guess he has no windows from his offices looking out over Civic Center Park.\u00a0 Go by there ANY DAY, and you will see this. I apologize that the foreground is blurry, but driving by at 20 miles per hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writeofcenter.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}