Sunday, April 4, 2010

TIM PAWLENTY AND THE HOMELESS




Happy Easter, everybody. For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a nice full dinner with all the trimmings today, let each and every one of us count our blessings. For there are many in this country, due to this Great Recession, mental or physical infirmity, or the uncaring and unproductive attitudes and actions of cold-hearted, greedy corporate executives or self-centered politicians, who will be having a horrible day today, filled with absolutely needless hunger, frustration, and insecurity.


This is the second week in a row I am featuring a timely and relevant OpEd piece by the Minneapolis Star Tribune's fabulous writer Nick Coleman. He makes a sensible argument on behalf of our nation's growing number of homeless for ambitious self-serving politicians like Tim Pawlenty to stay at home and do their job instead of running around the country attempting to further their careers. The piece speaks for itself, but at its end, below, I will add some additional thoughts in bold.
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NICK COLEMAN: AN ARGUMENT ON BEHALF OF THE HOMELESS
Their ranks are growing -- and it's not because of choices they've made.

Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 4, 2010
Whenever I write about homelessness, I get avalanches of comments blaming the homeless for their situation. The homeless, I hear, "have made bad choices."

Although research shows that most of the problem is due to such things as lack of medical care, untreated mental illness and joblessness, it is true that some very bad choices have been made. But not by the poor. By the rich, by the powerful, and by the politicians whose policies, heartless budget-cutting and blind eye to the effects of their decisions have sent the numbers of needy people soaring.

Gov. AbsenTee-PAW, Tim Pawlenty, has been out of the state 41 percent of the time (it may be more) since the Legislature opened, according to a story last week from Minnesota Public Radio. The governor argues that he doesn't have to hang around because he has finished his chores while the stupid Legislature is still yammering. But there is more to being governor than babysitting 201 lawmakers, and Minnesota needs someone who will stay in the cockpit.

Trying to stem the growing tide of homelessness is just one of many worthy obligations that might merit the full attention of our state's wandering leader.

Back in the flush economy of his early years in the governor's office, Pawlenty seemed to be a passionate advocate for the homeless. In 2004, the second year of his first term, he even unveiled an ambitious plan to "end" long-term homelessness in the state by 2010. It hasn't worked. He isn't even trying anymore.

Pawlenty blames the recession, but the recession didn't start until the end of 2008. The number of homeless in Minnesota had stagnated at between 7,000 and 8,000 for years, but last year, it surged by 22 percent, to 9,500.

The governor's crusade to end homelessness has withered in proportion to the expansion of his national ambitions. With severe cuts to social services and welfare, billions in unallotments and his torpedoing of the General Assistance Medical Care program (forcing a rescue by DFLers who settled for an inferior replacement program), Pawlenty has worsened many of the problems that lead to homelessness.

And if it weren't for millions in stimulus money from the Obama administration (which Pawlenty has derided) to keep more people from becoming homeless as they lose their jobs and their homes, the problem would be far worse. Tim Pawlenty owes Barack Obama a thank-you note, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

On Thursday, the first day of April, the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul was crowded. That was a bad sign, because the first day of the month is normally quiet at social-service centers, a day when Social Security and other assistance payments arrive and the poor temporarily have money in their pockets. But there are no "quiet" days anymore. The center is constantly jammed, with 250 people a night sleeping on floor mats and 500 meals being served a day.

Over in a corner that is called "the 'hood" by some of the clients who sit and chat while waiting for medical assistance or help trying to find housing, a guy named Randy Winn marveled at his fate. Winn, 44, worked in a butcher shop until it closed in December and eventually lost his apartment.

"This is totally brand-new to me," he said, looking around the bustling shelter. "I've looked for work at a lot of places, but they all tell me they're sizing down, not hiring. I'm very versatile at work, but there is nothing for me and, every day, it seems like this place fills up more and more. Wow, what a change of life!"

Life is changing for all of the homeless. For the worse.

More are children (3,200, according to the Wilder Foundation); fewer have jobs of any kind (only one out of five; half as many as a decade ago); four out of 10 were evicted from their last home. Almost half suffer from mental illness; half have chronic (and often untreated) health problems; 62 percent are minorities.

You may be able to ignore this if you are traipsing around the country running for president. But it's harder if you live here.

Growing homelessness, says Becky Lentz, communications director for Catholic Charities, is just one troubling symptom of larger problems: A lack of jobs that pay a living wage; a lack of accessible and affordable health care; a lack of affordable housing convenient to public transit; the persistent effects of racism, poverty and neglect.

"Homelessness is not going away," Lentz says. "It's not getting better. These are people who we've failed as a society."

So. Do you want to blame homelessness on bad choices? Be my guest: There have been a lot of bad choices. But be fair: Let's start at the top.

Nick Coleman is a senior fellow at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University. He can be reached at nickcoleman@gmail.com.
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In light of the gigantically huge amount of wealth held by the abysmally small number of people in this country, there is no excuse for ANYBODY who is a citizen of this nation to be homeless, hungry, or without health insurance. And yet, those numbers continue to rise. That is indefensible.

We look in horror and wonderment at the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. We express amazement that so many German citizens could have stood by idly, allowing Adolf Hitler and his followers to selectively round up, confine, and murder millions of innocent Jews and political opponents. We question how a civilized people could allow such a thing.

I would suggest that homelessness and poverty is the new concentration camp of millions of OUR OWN citizens, right here and right now, TODAY! True, we have no modern-day Gestapo rounding people up and throwing them onto the streets to die. But we do have millions of innocent citizens who are languishing in substandard conditions due to foreclosure, unemployment, and lack of proper health care. They have been pushed onto our streets by the greed of irresponsible Wall Street bankers and speculators, as well as wealthy corporate CEOs, who have taken billions in TARP bailouts and then turned around and forgot all about, or basically said "go to hell", to all the millions of victims they themselves have created.


ARE WE THAT MUCH MORE CIVILIZED OR HUMANE THAN THE NAZIS, TO ACCEPT AND TOLERATE THIS KIND OF NONSENSE? Think about it, people!

And we have plenty of $174,000-a-year conservative Republican and Blue Dog Democratic congresspersons turning a blind eye and a hostile mouth toward new and needed financial regulation and extended unemployment benefits for many millions of the yet-unemployed. And we have plenty of full-bellied and insensitive conservative Republican and Tea-Party types who support these buffoons. And, of course, we have conservative Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty galavanting across the country trying to become the next President, instead of staying back home and responsibly doing his job and earning his paycheck, taking care of those in his state who desperately need some help.

It would be unfathomable in any country and time except here and now.

12 comments:

Cirze said...

I love you for running this today, Jack.

A day of plenty for those who have it already.

A sharp rebuke and reminder to those of us who made "bad" choices like being replaced by H-1B's or people in India or China who were more used to starving.

We're catching up (on) though, aren't we?

Tx for the notice.

Love ya!

S
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Jack Jodell said...

Suzan,

Thank you for the kind words. LBJ's War on Poverty caught me at an impressionable age and I'm glad, because it has influenced me ever since. Just as in the mid-1960s, today, and ALWAYS in this country, there is no need for poverty and economic stress for so many while we have a tiny few holding so ungodly-much wealth! This may be "the land of the free" but it is surely NOT the land of the just!

I applaud you, too, for your continued exposes of how those with everything and more are ripping off all the rest of us and especially the poor. We are kindred spirits in that regard, and I love you, too, for that!

Thanks again, and keep up the good fight! I'm with ya all the way! :-)

Commander Zaius said...

Jack you wrote:
In light of the gigantically huge amount of wealth held by the abysmally small number of people in this country, there is no excuse for ANYBODY who is a citizen of this nation to be homeless, hungry, or without health insurance.

Jack remember the old Super Tramp Song?
I said now, watch what you say, now were calling you a radical, a liberal, fanatical criminal...

Since I work with a bunch of right-wingers and avowed Teabaggers I avoid political discussions like the plague, I have to keep my job.

However, one of my coworkers showed his true colors recently when a very superficial discussion about recent events tripped some sort deranged response in him and he flared up like a nuclear bomb carrying on about how he was always responsible with his money and that no one ever gave him a hand.

For me this continues to be boiled down to simmering racial hatred and selfish fears that some evil organization will come and take away the right-wingers hard earned money. Even when the right-winger or Teabaggers claims to be a follower of Jesus, the tenets of that faith that call for people taking care of the poor and sick are forgotten.

Hey call me a liberal but Social Darwinism is alive and well. Most of these right-wingers simply don't care about anyone else.

Nevertheless, my coworker may be correct in that he has never asked for or received help but I always figure he would be the first one screaming for it if his luck ever changed.

Jack Jodell said...

each Bum,
You said:
"Hey call me a liberal but Social Darwinism is alive and well. Most of these right-wingers simply don't care about anyone else."

That is SO true! These people only care about themselves (and extensions of themselves, like their IMMEDIATE family). Anybody else needing help is a bad guy, low life, etc.

That these people loudly profess to be followers of Jesus is not surprising: some of the most bigoted and selfish people I have ever known wore Jesus on their sleeve, but they were sadly mistaken. They were no more Christian than Charles Manson.

Let your co-worker be laid off (or laid up due to sickness or injury) and he'll be the first guy in line for government benefits---I guarantee you! And he'll also be the loudest voice calling for MORE or LARGER benefits. It never fails.

I am sorry you are in a work environment with so many belligerent, short-sighted cavemen. I have experienced that it in the past, too, and know it is no picnic.

I commend you, Beach, for your self-discipline, sense of compassion, and willingness to turn the other cheek. Those ARE truly Christian values!

Cirze said...

BB,

Nice response, but did you think to ask him if he had relatives who were drawing Social Security (as they all draw more than they contributed if they live on it long at all)? How about anyone on Medicare, Medicaid or any of the hundreds of Federal programs (and I'm not even going into home loans, etc., which most people get and never count as "aid" from the Federal govt.) that people are able to use to help better their lives like food stamps or even unemployment insurance (came from the "libruls" you know)?

But I understand why you can't say "too much" to idiots - a maxim I honor daily.

And thank you for your kind words, Jack.

I wonder everyday if people are sufficiently informed about how these big issues (and the constituencies that benefit from them) will affect their long-term financial health.

My guess is that people just go along having another beer and watching the tube because they feel so powerless to change anything, which just plays into the hands of those who want to think of those people as ignorant serfs who deserve what happens to them.

I was sixteen when LBJ's War on Poverty became the major news item, and it profoundly affected me as I wrote papers about it throughout my poli sci/business admin careers (heck, even to the present) as it was given a bad name by those selfish hordes (who made up tales of "cadillac queens" and the "undeserving poor") who didn't want a fairer world - just one where they would be enriched by living off of the efforts of others.

My favorite retort to those who want to argue that it didn't work is "it didn't work because people like you didn't want it to - why not get on the team to actually improve the lives of Americans?"

Silence always reigns afterwards.

S
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Jack Jodell said...

Suzan,
Way to go, m'lady! That term "undeserving poor" just makes my blood boil! My reply to that would be that the "undeserving rich" (trust funders, market manipulators, or those who underpaid and exploited their workers and subsequently made a fortune) are actual economic parasites and are far more morally deficient than ANY social services-gamer!And then, of course, we have the middle and upper middle class wannabes who are so selfish and determined to climb the ladder at all costs that they don't care whose toes they step on in their climb---they're just as bad, and maybe even worse, because they have nothing but contempt for the poor.

On being informed, I maintain that we have the greatest amount of accessible information sources of any people in the world, but most of us just don't bother to make much of an effort. We want everything easy, and to come to us rather than we digging for it. People watch TV news rather than reading in depth, and TV news is woefully inadequate and often slanted. Fox "News", for example, is the biggest disseminator of DISinformation in the world! It's criminal, and it's dummying-down the country.

amadmike1 said...

We are all on the same page these past few days Jack. Brilliant post!

Jack Jodell said...

Thanks, madmike1! It's good bein' in the same publication with you and everyone else here! :-)

Unknown said...

Important storytelling here Jack. A really good piece. You evoke kindness and care... what can be more vital than that? Inspiration is of the best ethics...
TY for the post.

Jack Jodell said...

And thanbks for yoir heart and insight, Gwendolyn! We can't just let the homeless hang or pretend they're not there. The same holds true for the jobless. Conservatives hate wasting money, but they're sure not hesitant to waste human resources! And, in Pawlenty's case, he ought not to be out wasting taxpayer dollars on furthering his own career! We're not paying him for that!

TomCat said...

Well said, Jack. Pawlenty is one of the more moderate Republicans. That puts gin slightly to the right of Torquemada.

TomCat said...

him, mot gin.