Ontopic Political Poo Flinging

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Its the new normal. The US is playing catch up on this form of political influencing and until it starts directly effecting the GOP at a national level there won't be a fix put in place.

I'm curious what Russia's end game is.
 
So there's this crisis in our area (and throughout much of the US) regarding homelessness. It's at an all-time high and there is a big push to fix the problems it creates. Here in our area, there is a recreational bike trail along the top edge of a flood control canal. This bike trail was created through two counties so that people can bike from the inland area about 20-25 miles from the beach all the way to the beach without riding on the streets. It was highly used through the 90s and 00s, but as of recently it has gotten far less use due to the 2008 recession, when a large number of people had lost their homes and ended up homeless. There are now an estimated 1000 homeless people living in encampments scattered along this recreational trail and complaints of loose needles, human feces and violent encounters with a small portion of these people has increased to a level where very few people actually use this trail anymore.

The county has been extremely lenient on the "no camping" rule along the trail for years, and now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. The taxpayers are fed up with paying for a recreational area that is used as a homeless "shelter" of sorts, and it has been recently stated that enforcement of the "no camping" law will go into effect. They've started to cite the homeless along the trail, giving them 30 days to pack up and leave. As of last week, a lawsuit has been issued against the county and involved cities claiming that, in simple language, the new enforcement of an existing law criminalizes homelessness and that forcing them to leave is a violation of their 8th amendment right, subjecting the to a cruel and unusual punishment.

The wife and I discussed this a bit and we are on very different sides of this. She's a bleeding heart liberal saying that we can't kick them out because they are human beings and they have every right to live where they need to in order to survive. Especially if it is public property, and that we should do everything we can to help them live a decent life. I'm only liberal to an extent. I think that while there's nowhere near enough support for the homeless, it's also NOT the governments responsibility to take care of them. It's the people's responsibility to support their neighbors as they see fit. But just like I don't have a responsibility to house them on my front lawn, I also don't have the responsibility to pay for housing of them either, and my government should not force me or anyone else to do such a thing. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't donate anything to a homeless shelter or to some sort of non-profit to help them, but I'm already paying tax dollars to do this inefficiently. Personally, I'd much rather change the tax code so that donations to certain things are directly deducted from my tax payment, and they'd end up being more fiscally conservative with the funding of those projects as opposed to having a government employee sitting on their ass, working for 2 hours a day on something that a non-profit would have an entire team tackle in a much much shorter period of time without a shit ton of red tape. My money would go to the projects that I deem important.

side note: There would still be taxes for essential items like fire, police, medical emergencies etc. Those are things that a city could not live without.
 
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Its the new normal. The US is playing catch up on this form of political influencing and until it starts directly effecting the GOP at a national level there won't be a fix put in place.

I'm curious what Russia's end game is.
I'm guessing to take us off of our high horse and make us realize that we're just as vulnerable as the countries that we've been doing the same thing to for many many decades.
 
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Personally, I'd much rather change the tax code so that donations to certain things are directly deducted from my tax payment,
Have you ever itemized? You get to deduct the cost from your income. (doing it the way you suggest would mean earning $100, paying your $30 tax (30% in this example) and then if you buy $70 in groceries for the homeless with your net income you'd reduce your tax by $70. You see how that doesn't maths?


My money would go to the projects that I deem important.
But since you have control and someone else won't have control of your 'donations' you'll be back to an -ist supporting -ism.
 
So there's this crisis in our area (and throughout much of the US) regarding homelessness. It's at an all-time high and there is a big push to fix the problems it creates. Here in our area, there is a recreational bike trail along the top edge of a flood control canal. This bike trail was created through two counties so that people can bike from the inland area about 20-25 miles from the beach all the way to the beach without riding on the streets. It was highly used through the 90s and 00s, but as of recently it has gotten far less use due to the 2008 recession, when a large number of people had lost their homes and ended up homeless. There are now an estimated 1000 homeless people living in encampments scattered along this recreational trail and complaints of loose needles, human feces and violent encounters with a small portion of these people has increased to a level where very few people actually use this trail anymore.

The county has been extremely lenient on the "no camping" rule along the trail for years, and now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. The taxpayers are fed up with paying for a recreational area that is used as a homeless "shelter" of sorts, and it has been recently stated that enforcement of the "no camping" law will go into effect. They've started to cite the homeless along the trail, giving them 30 days to pack up and leave. As of last week, a lawsuit has been issued against the county and involved cities claiming that, in simple language, the new enforcement of an existing law criminalizes homelessness and that forcing them to leave is a violation of their 8th amendment right, subjecting the to a cruel and unusual punishment.

The wife and I discussed this a bit and we are on very different sides of this. She's a bleeding heart liberal saying that we can't kick them out because they are human beings and they have every right to live where they need to in order to survive. Especially if it is public property, and that we should do everything we can to help them live a decent life. I'm only liberal to an extent. I think that while there's nowhere near enough support for the homeless, it's also NOT the governments responsibility to take care of them. It's the people's responsibility to support their neighbors as they see fit. But just like I don't have a responsibility to house them on my front lawn, I also don't have the responsibility to pay for housing of them either, and my government should not force me or anyone else to do such a thing. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't donate anything to a homeless shelter or to some sort of non-profit to help them, but I'm already paying tax dollars to do this inefficiently. Personally, I'd much rather change the tax code so that donations to certain things are directly deducted from my tax payment, and they'd end up being more fiscally conservative with the funding of those projects as opposed to having a government employee sitting on their ass, working for 2 hours a day on something that a non-profit would have an entire team tackle in a much much shorter period of time without a shit ton of red tape. My money would go to the projects that I deem important.

side note: There would still be taxes for essential items like fire, police, medical emergencies etc. Those are things that a city could not live without.
I could get behind directed donations from taxes I pay.
I also understand the resentment Californians harbor for these homeless.
You pay rediculous rents and mortgages and these people live in tents and spread Hepatitis and leave their Aids needles on the bike trail which gives the bike tires Bike Aids.
It's bullshit.
 
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Its the new normal. The US is playing catch up on this form of political influencing and until it starts directly effecting the GOP at a national level there won't be a fix put in place.

I'm curious what Russia's end game is.

I think russia's end game was to weaken the future president that we we all told had a lock on the presidency.
 
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So there's this crisis in our area (and throughout much of the US) regarding homelessness. It's at an all-time high and there is a big push to fix the problems it creates. Here in our area, there is a recreational bike trail along the top edge of a flood control canal. This bike trail was created through two counties so that people can bike from the inland area about 20-25 miles from the beach all the way to the beach without riding on the streets. It was highly used through the 90s and 00s, but as of recently it has gotten far less use due to the 2008 recession, when a large number of people had lost their homes and ended up homeless. There are now an estimated 1000 homeless people living in encampments scattered along this recreational trail and complaints of loose needles, human feces and violent encounters with a small portion of these people has increased to a level where very few people actually use this trail anymore.

The county has been extremely lenient on the "no camping" rule along the trail for years, and now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. The taxpayers are fed up with paying for a recreational area that is used as a homeless "shelter" of sorts, and it has been recently stated that enforcement of the "no camping" law will go into effect. They've started to cite the homeless along the trail, giving them 30 days to pack up and leave. As of last week, a lawsuit has been issued against the county and involved cities claiming that, in simple language, the new enforcement of an existing law criminalizes homelessness and that forcing them to leave is a violation of their 8th amendment right, subjecting the to a cruel and unusual punishment.

The wife and I discussed this a bit and we are on very different sides of this. She's a bleeding heart liberal saying that we can't kick them out because they are human beings and they have every right to live where they need to in order to survive. Especially if it is public property, and that we should do everything we can to help them live a decent life. I'm only liberal to an extent. I think that while there's nowhere near enough support for the homeless, it's also NOT the governments responsibility to take care of them. It's the people's responsibility to support their neighbors as they see fit. But just like I don't have a responsibility to house them on my front lawn, I also don't have the responsibility to pay for housing of them either, and my government should not force me or anyone else to do such a thing. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't donate anything to a homeless shelter or to some sort of non-profit to help them, but I'm already paying tax dollars to do this inefficiently. Personally, I'd much rather change the tax code so that donations to certain things are directly deducted from my tax payment, and they'd end up being more fiscally conservative with the funding of those projects as opposed to having a government employee sitting on their ass, working for 2 hours a day on something that a non-profit would have an entire team tackle in a much much shorter period of time without a shit ton of red tape. My money would go to the projects that I deem important.

side note: There would still be taxes for essential items like fire, police, medical emergencies etc. Those are things that a city could not live without.
The best thing imo is to do it through taxes. But that would only work if we actually had any say in what the government does. We should be able to shutdown or modify a government program that isn't doing what it should be doing, year to year. The homeless won't be any better off through non profits. We can aleady help through non profits now. If that was going to work, it would already be working.

And the mentally that we already pay taxes so why should we do any more is crap and it proves there aren't enough people who actually care about the state of homelessness to do anything bout it. All people really want is for their city to be cleaned up. Most don't care one bit about the actual people. If they did it wouldn't be an issue.
 
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