EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 4116
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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BlackJack
United States9903 Posts
On December 23 2023 04:24 KwarK wrote: In the case of defunding it literally is a case of “this number is higher than that number”. You described the 2023 situation as defunded. It was record funding. No amount of word games can get you from the reality, record funding, to your claim, defunded. Let it go. You don’t get it and that’s okay. Not everyone needs to understand everything. But at least we went from On December 22 2023 15:39 KwarK wrote: ...nobody ever actually defunded police anywhere and nobody was ever actually calling for what they imagine that it meant. It just doesn't happen... To specifically "There was no defund specifically in Oakland and specifically for 2023." From anywhere ever to 1 city for 1 fiscal year. Which is a claim I never even made. That's a lot of backtracking. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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KwarK
United States41383 Posts
On December 23 2023 05:48 JimmiC wrote: Now I'm confused, does defund mean have the budgets not keep up with inflation? I always thought it meant "prevent (a group or organization) from continuing to receive funds." Can we get your definition? And perhaps where you got it from? Edit: to your edit Kwark is probably using the standard definition of defund. “Defunding is when they talk about lowering the budget but then change their course and then increase it to record levels.” Since the critical moment in 2021 that Blackjack identifies as the defundening moment the budget is up significantly which is why he couldn’t get help in 2023. The defunding caused that. Had they not engaged in that vote, followed by spending increases, he would have gotten help getting his car. Not sure why this is so hard to follow. Defunding is when no car. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15264 Posts
On December 23 2023 04:54 JimmiC wrote: The left wing version involves taking the houseless drug addict and putting him in a facility that includes counseling, drug treatment and job training before you send them back into society. Just leaving them to suffer is not leftwing, it is not rightwing, it American. I’m not interested in the technical definitions of political ideology because it mostly doesn’t apply well to real world situations and real world groups of people. This is a good example of that. You are right to point out that “leaving people alone” is a generally libertarian philosophy and can be broadly attributed to right wing schools of thought. However, I am saying an extremely large number of people in the Portland area who identify as very left leaning widely advocated for the policies I am describing. So however we want to label the thought itself, I am saying it was widely held and pushed by very left leaning people. I have discussed this topic with many people in the Portland area many times because it’s where I live. Outside of family, almost every single person I speak to is left leaning. Let me explain where they are coming from. Since I think we can all agree homelessness is a form of societal failure, such as people not getting proper mental health treatment and whatnot, when homeless people steal or cause other issues, any form of punishment is labeled as “punishing someone for being poor or having mental illness. It’s not a crime to be poor. They are doing what they need to do because society failed them. We owe it to them to leave them alone and let them survive” Additionally, if someone doesn’t realize what reality is, and they run around screaming about dragons and attacking people with knives, these folks used to say it would be taking away their rights as a human to put them in a mental health facility or otherwise force them into some form of rehabilitation. It was often equated with imprisonment. That was 5 years ago. Things have definitely changed. 5 years ago, if you even slightly complained about anything relating to homelessness, like having your house broken into, everyone on the Portland subreddit would call you a monster and say you’re victim blaming and that you should have done more to help them or given them food. Because of the dynamics BlackJack is describing, many people commonly say they are devastated by the situation but that they are simply sympathy fatigued. They say the situation is too bad to just stick to their guns. Sidewalks aren’t usable. Many parks are riddled with open drug use and it’s straight up not a safe place to bring children. The pendulum is definitely about to swing hard. | ||
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farvacola
United States18805 Posts
Also, we should be very skeptical of the usefulness of using whatever is said on a fucking subreddit as a representative example of anything. Internet forums breed idiosyncratic relations and dynamics, something we know all too well here. | ||
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farvacola
United States18805 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15264 Posts
On December 23 2023 07:25 farvacola wrote: The solution to mentally unwell people filling the streets is to fund public institutions that give them a place to live and work on their problems. Doesn’t matter if one rightly identifies that as a somewhat left wing idea, it’s a simple and obvious one that folks should rally around regardless. Police funding is entirely beside the point. Also, we should be very skeptical of the usefulness of using whatever is said on a fucking subreddit as a representative example of anything. Internet forums breed idiosyncratic relations and dynamics, something we know all too well here. You’re right on both points. Finland and Utah are great examples of humane approaches to homelessness. Unfortunately, Portland and even Oregon do not have nearly the muscle necessary to solve the homeless issues in Oregon because it’s much bigger than that. Once Oregon became a hub for not just mentally unhealthy homeless people to migrate to, but also the people who truly do view it as a “lifestyle”, it became an issue that can likely only be solved federally. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details both because I am lazy and because it’s extensive, but I will say Portland and Oregon as a whole has been shifting an enormous amount of time, energy, and money into addressing homelessness in many ways. But the sheer volume of the issue makes the benefits hard to notice. The unfortunate reality is that people have been waiting a long time to see improvement. It’s not that people’s perspectives have shifted. It’s not that they are suddenly Cletus. It’s that for those of us who are invested in this issue, we have seen a great number of our progressive policies enacted. We’ve seen the impact and we’ve also seen how far we have left to go before it feels like a fully livable city with parks. I just want to be clear that me and many others who view the situation exactly as you do still all feel the same way. However, it has become plainly obvious we need to either decide to clean up camps on sidewalks and in parks, or simply not have sidewalks and parks. There are better and worse areas. It’s easy to find plenty of images online where people do the usual “oh I thought Fox News said this is a lawless hell hole?”, with a beautiful image of kids playing and laughing in front of a quirky Portland cafe. But there are very bad parts. And everything in between. Furthermore, an unfortunate alignment of 2 separate legal changes and a bill created a weird situation where if you bring a cop with you and point to a guy literally smoking crack in a park intended for kids, that person will not be arrested. They can truly just keep on smoking that crack and nothing will happen. It is being addressed, since it was an unintended effect and our governor is working out the details to fix it. But when you combine that with the really bad situation where camps are so widespread that people are killing them on accident as they drive down the interstate. They wander out of their tent with no idea what’s going on, run down the interstate at 3 am, and suddenly they are dead. Interestingly, the camp situation is being handled most effectively by disability protections. People who use wheelchairs are basically slicing through camps like butter because of the very well defined legal protections for disabled people using sidewalks. Calls that were around for months are gone in like 48 hours. I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that a collection of disabled folks are the unexpected saviors right now. So as I said, we all still look at the nuts and bolts of how to properly address homelessness and we all agree cleaning out camps is not the optimal solution. That has not changed. But we are seeing the problem is so vast and so far beyond even our state government’s capabilities, that it’s “either us, or them”. Do we just not have parks and sidewalks anymore? Or do we say “sorry, but we are kicking you out and you will need to go somewhere else”? Another thing: because so many people are being killed on the interstate, many people are finally realizing this stupid libertarian crap about “telling poor people to stop living their lives” is nonsense and it’s truly just negligence. We aren’t helping the schizophrenic when we give them the right to sprint around naked at 3AM in the middle of an interstate. We have no reason to pat ourselves on the back for leaving them alone. We are failures when we ignore their suffering and let them rot in tents. Letting them throw up tents in dangerous places is awful for everyone. As for the Reddit thing: again, me being lazy and phone posting. There are all sorts of city council and this and that city and state positions that are being flipped towards people who are advocating for removing camps. I used Reddit as an easy to convey and easy to understand metric where a comment supporting homeless camps used to be at +200 and now it’s -200 because people are like “idk bro but this shit is totally busted and we gotta just get back to square 1 and actually have parks and whatnot. I feel extremely bad but we aren’t even helping them right now so what’s the point of ruining our streets and parks?” But again, it’s not just Reddit. It’s actual elections and actual major changes to policy. I suppose I truly am too lazy to dig up all the links and I understand if that means you assume I’m full of crap. But I assure you I am not. I’m not happy about the situation, but I am giving you my honest impression of the situation from a policy and election perspective. | ||
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Razyda
428 Posts
On December 23 2023 02:49 KwarK wrote: You opened with an anecdote about how you had a recent experience with Oakland PD in which they failed to perform well. You attributed this poor performance to the fact that the department had been defunded. Cause, defunding. Effect, bad service. That was your claim. Actually it seems like BlackJack is somewhat correct if thats how you present it. (Disclaimer: no idea whether any of the sources in links are left or right leaning) https://abc7news.com/defund-police-oakland-crime-shooting/12311750/ "But Chief Armstrong says that's the reality -- budget cuts forced him to cut 68 positions." Whats follow: For example, 48 officer positions that were assigned to the surge 911 response unit to help "reduce high wait times and lower overtime usage" were frozen. 2023: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oakland-budget-mayor-sheng-thao-freeze-vacant-positions-jobs/ "Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao wants to freeze many of the roughly 300 vacant positions paid for by the city's General Fund to help balance the 2023-25 budget, her office said this week." "The proposal to freeze roughly 300 jobs will reduce the full-time equivalent positions in the Police Department by 93, reducing the department's authorized sworn staffing to 710 full-time equivalent roles. Patrol will have 29 fewer funded positions, the criminal investigations unit will have 28 fewer and the crime reduction unit will have 21 fewer, according to the budget." The proposal seem to get through: https://oaklandside.org/2023/06/27/oakland-budget-2023-2025-city-council-approves/ "As a result, in the run-up to last night’s meeting the City Council did not push back on the most important elements of Thao’s plan, which prevented layoffs by freezing hundreds of vacant funded positions citywide and cut department budgets." If you are forced to cut positions in one year and then vacancies get frozen then cause effect chain seems to be there. @BlackJack you gonna love this, I honestly think you should look to move if you have any possibility of doing so. While looking into above I found something so ridiculous that I wouldnt believe so far as 3 years ago that this is possible: From the last link above: "Another major change to OPD will occur sometime after June 2024, when the Internal Affairs Division is replaced by civilian investigators. Currently, sworn police officers are responsible for investigating allegations of police misconduct. These officers will be reassigned to investigate crimes like homicides and burglaries. They will be replaced by civilians working for the Community Police Review Agency, an arm of the Police Commission. The plan, says councilmembers, will save money, help solve more violent crimes against the community, and make police oversight more independent of the department." Bolded: obviously I got interested what it is and who would be working there: https://www.oaklandca.gov/departments/community-police-review-agency there is following in news section: "JUN 02, 2022 Oakland Residents Encouraged to Apply for Police Commission" link: https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2022/oakland-residents-encouraged-to-apply-for-police-commission this gets crazy now: “Oakland’s volunteer Police Commission is currently the most powerful and independent Police Commission in the country,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said." So who is ideal candidate there: "Commissioners must meet two criteria: a. be a resident of the City of Oakland; and b. be over 18 years of age by the date of the first Commission meeting. The Selection Panel strongly encourages formerly incarcerated individuals to apply." So if the Oaklandside is reliable source (which i hope now it is not) then GLHF | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15264 Posts
As Farvacola pointed out, mechanisms of solving homelessness are not mysterious. It is well characterized and understood. Knowledge is not always the issue. And sometimes the government framework that exists is incapable of solving unique problems and it can cause issues to go on for an extremely long time and get worse. IMO both Oakland and Portland are great examples of situations that simply are not solvable through local means. The federal government needs a better mechanism for pulling from the infinite pockets to strong arm issues that are way beyond local capability. Mayor Pete should have some protocol or mechanism he can use to drill down $50B to supercharge efforts to solve Oregon homeless or whatever other issue in other places. Oregon can’t solve our issues. Oakland can’t solve their issues. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland22448 Posts
On December 23 2023 09:30 Mohdoo wrote: One important thing for everyone to keep in mind is that when we discuss specific cities, like Portland and Oakland, the unique challenges they have are difficult or impossible to compare to cities as a whole. When I say this or that about homelessness in Portland, or Blackjack says this or that about crime in Oakland, it is not intended to broadly describe these dynamics in a national way. As Farvacola pointed out, mechanisms of solving homelessness are not mysterious. It is well characterized and understood. Knowledge is not always the issue. And sometimes the government framework that exists is incapable of solving unique problems and it can cause issues to go on for an extremely long time and get worse. IMO both Oakland and Portland are great examples of situations that simply are not solvable through local means. The federal government needs a better mechanism for pulling from the infinite pockets to strong arm issues that are way beyond local capability. Mayor Pete should have some protocol or mechanism he can use to drill down $50B to supercharge efforts to solve Oregon homeless or whatever other issue in other places. Oregon can’t solve our issues. Oakland can’t solve their issues. This seems sensible to me. It’s not really a Portland/Oakland homelessness problem, it’s a wider homelessness problem where by virtue of being less shitty to such folks such places become the ‘promised land’. And in effect are mitigating it being a major problem in other locales if people are just migrating. | ||
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KwarK
United States41383 Posts
They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. | ||
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gobbledydook
Australia2591 Posts
In Melbourne, homeless people generally just sleep under empty shop fronts or bridges etc and it is generally accepted as part of the city. I read some interesting news article about homeless people who actively avoid the shelters because they don't feel safe in them. I am not sure how these problems can be fully solved. Many of the homeless are homeless because of mental issues that stop them from living a normal life and holding down a job. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15264 Posts
On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote: We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets. They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. Similarly, a quote from my friend who moved to Chicago for work after living in Portland his whole life: “people who visit from Portland always comment on how there’s zero homeless camps and whatnot. It’s because if you try to sleep outside in Chicago during the winter, you will 100% die no matter what” Same deal in Phoenix AZ. Go ahead and try to sleep outside and you’ll die. No homeless camp problem. The west coast totally owns from a homeless perspective. If nothing else the weather. Even if we ignore the policy stuff entirely, there is an inherent giant benefit to being homeless in certain places rather than others. It’s not that Phoenix is a futuristic utopia that overcame income inequality. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2403 Posts
I've spoken with a number of addicts and ex-addicts; if you're trying to get clean homeless shelters do not help you. | ||
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farvacola
United States18805 Posts
A lot of this follows from the simple, yet highly destructive premise that people who need help need to prove to society that they deserve it. Unless and until we can reorient ourselves away from that obsession, real solutions are going to continue to prove elusive. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22201 Posts
On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote: We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets. They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. | ||
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gobbledydook
Australia2591 Posts
On December 23 2023 11:51 GreenHorizons wrote: This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. Since we haven't invented Star Trek replicators yet, this might be the least bad system we've had so far. In the past, those that had such mental problems might have just disappeared and died of starvation. | ||
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