“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” – Anatole France
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” – Anatole France
From TPM today: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that forbidding people without housing from sleeping with a blanket outside — even when they have nowhere else to go — does not run afoul of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Shame there’s no law that would prohibit a sitting justice from selling his investment real estate on remarkably favorable terms to the managing partner of a big firm with business before the court. Not of course that such a thing would ever happen. Again.
If local police actually enforce* enforce laws against homelessness the more resourceful of the homeless will find ways to live in vacant buildings, abandoned vehicles, kiosks of any kind, rooftops, garages and elsewhere. Back in the 80's I worked in a one-story office building that unbeknownst to anyone also housed a homeless Viet Nam vet who was living in the space above the ceiling. He was able to sleep most of the day above a quiet unused part of the building, and at night he's wait until the janitorial staff left and then come down and survive on lunch items left behind in the brakeroom refrigerator and take care of hygiene in one of the large restrooms. He survived there for nearly nine months, including through a Michigan winter, before being discovered late at night by one of the managers who returned to pick up some work. I have a grudging admiration for that man because he was resourceful and did little harm, unless you're the type who'd truly miss half a bad ham sandwich and some limp pickles. (Most get the vapors if a power outage lasts beyond four hours, while the homeless survivors will inherit the Fury Road we seem to be headed to.)
On the otherhand, there is a longstanding encampment of homeless people two towns away in a swale between a freeway and an on ramp. It's widely known it's there. The police don't roust anyone because no one complains about them even though they become somewhat more visible due to campfires after foliage disappears in the fall. And, yes, the "problem" court must, absolutely must be addressed.
That law did not work out too well, as I recall..... I saw Biden at a rally in North Carolina today, being everything we wanted him to be on Thursday. What happened to that guy.....? Perhaps some time and more energetic appearances by Smokin' Joe will recover somewhat from the debate, but how sad that it happened the way it did.
I watched Biden today. He was on fire.🔥 Certainly boosted my spirits. Of course, much different venue/“moderators” and minus being attacked with rapid -fire ,bull @#$& lies. (Maybe why tSCOTUS didn’t ban bump stocks🤔)
My hope is that Biden realizes that appearances are important, and being prepared is no protection from a dam-break of BS from the greatest bullshitter of our time..... I suspect Biden was "over-prepared" - stuffed full of facts that he could not keep straight (like a student cramming for a test), so conscious of getting his agenda out that he lost the human qualities that make him Smokin' Joe..... Just don't make that bloody mistake again - the second debate will be much closer to the election and more people will be tuned in. Biden's "debate preparation team" should be sent to the Russian Front.....
It really was all about the optics. Nixon, with his 5 o'clock shadow and slightly sweaty sheen, looked shifty and thuggish. Kennedy looked handsome and "Presidential". Thus are our leaders elected....sigh.
Exactly. And what are the newsreaders going on and on about STILL? President Biden's "defiance" "on the ropes, trying to bounce back"...yada, yada, yad endless, senseless yadas. It's both nauseating and infuriating. If my stupid tv is still whole it's only because my shoulder hurts too much from trail clearing work, to throw anything at it.
Why can't the networks and other media-based professional critics criticize Trump for his ugly Gish gallop bullsh*t? Even his most outrageous lies haven't gotten much examination. Unlike the magnifying-glass parsing that Biden's performance has gotten.
Seymour Hersh, one of the best investigative journalists of the past 50 years, reports that Biden’s performance in the debate isn’t the worst problem, Biden’s befuddlement has been seen repeatedly in the White House over the past 6 months; there’s a full cover up in process.
on The Hill, Becket Adams wrote a year ago about repeated gaffes: “one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the …question. Namely, ’Is Biden OK?’”
thing is, most of those sources either tilt right or are proudly so. so their opinions mean nothing. I like a thought experiment I dreamt up, which is "let's say Biden has NOT been running things and it's a bunch of advisors. are they doing it well?" it seems to me they have in. and that scenario isn't really that different in the best of times. presidents (unless they're completely dysfunctional and crazy, much like, say, TFF) don'r run things by themselves. they have cabinets and experts (how many experts there will be after this fucking Chevron decision is uhhh...) advising them who actually know about the shit they're talking about. an unrelated point is that those advisors and experts tend NOT to be criminals and morons.
Hersch has been "out to lunch" for the past 10 years. The Hill is a right wing magazine and anti-Biden. The National Review has had its head up its ass since Buckley founded it. If you're going to support "sources" like these, you might have come to the Wong Foo King Substack.
Honestly - only watched a few minutes at the beginning - he sounds SICK - as if he has a chest cold. Probably from all the traveling around the world & too many activities! Where was his doctor in the days before the debate? Looked old? Hell, he looked sick.
The "news"??? people are freaking idiots. And the pair of "journalists?" who ran the debate? They should be ashamed. I watched Beau of the 5th Column & of course have read TC's posts. I'll watch a little more of the debate - recorded it on C-Span - have no interest in panels opinions.
My impression was that Biden was literally gobsmacked at all the lies Trump was spewing (if his lips moved, he was lying.....). Possibly the audience for this early debate was mostly already committed voters, not the ones who normally don't watch election coverage until Labor Day..... At the moment, it is what it is, but if Biden can summon up more energy like that at the rally just the following day, this disastrous first debate may not natter that much - but Smokin' Joe has a LOT of work to do.....
yeah...when you read their decisions, you realize that these people are really not that bright. let's remember that most of them were on the "inside track" for a seat on SCOTUS. the right private schools, the right colleges, the right law schools (actually, it seems to come down to one nowadays). this is living in a bubble and, while they were able to rise to the top of this bubble, it's still not the real world. and having a perfect record on that narrow path of "elite legal education" says nothing about how smart they are about REAL SHIT. the only bright ones are (oddly enough?) Democratic appointments. I wonder why that is...
Wish it were so easy. Kicking homeless people around doesn't seem right, but neither does having drug addicts and the mentally ill squatting in public places. So what is the solution for those who don't or can't acknowledge they need help?
You're entirely right. I'm old enough to remember when the problem didn't exist because people this mentally ill were in mental hospitals. The treatment professionals were right that they needed reform for better care, but "freeing the patients" as the radicals wanted didn't work because of NIMBY (in fact that's where the term came from) and Sainted Ray Gun saw closing the hospitals as a way to "shrink the gub'mint" and of course didn't put any money in the budget for any kind of treatment or outpatient care for the people turned out (because he was such a goddamned PIG) and they were left on their own as they have been now for 50 years, other than to be an issue for their "betters" to cudgel their opponents with, and how someone is surprised that this is what we get after all that is beyond my understanding. Then there are those who lose the life they had, victims of the rich stealing everything in sight, and you have the trifecta. And then you have motherfuckers like the five scum today, making it OK to kick people when they're down because the cruelty is the point of the modern (not" conservative movement.
The solution is to claw back the ill-gotten gains of the 1%, and provide help that allows the victims to get the care and help they need. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen because Republicans won't do it and the Professional Bed Wetters of "progressive" politics won't actually try.
Thanks TC. This should be printed for every damned Repubbie to read and re-read and re-re-read. Legislatures across the country shut down mental institutions and then refuse to put money into treatment centers and mental health outpatient services.
The mental institutions--many of them--were horror shows, but what Reagan did was worse. Cruelty is the point, a Republican specialty.
I’m just a bit younger so I don’t recall everything, but I suppose the legislature could have put money in the budget, or did they and Reagan veto it? Any way the lack of funding for community centers was shamelessly repeated throughout the country, not just California. So the former Governor aside, no one anywhere in any state, red, blue, purple or chartreuse seems to have done a G** d*** thing.
We must remember the ruling is specific to the case brought before the Court, nothing more. And especially under Roberts. It’s cuts both ways but their charter is not solving a social ills. That’s a question for the rest of us.
I apologize. I did read that and should have acknowledged it.
Like immigration, there’s vested interests on either side of the equation who just want things the way they are for some reason or another. I suspect money is only one of those reasons. They may attack each other as distraction, but ignore the proverbial log in their own eye.
However in this case, one really can’t put the onus on SCOTUS. They were merely dealing with the case at hand within the charter they have. Like I said, it’s just not that easy.
As to Gorsuch, he was groomed from infancy by his mother to be what he is. She was the original wicked witch of the West, devoid of any human characteristics. Her son is a proud droid with not a trace of humanity. These cretins need to be made irrelevant at the earliest possible moment.
They;'re getting more and more shameless are they not? Why don't they just throw the Constitution out the window and be done with it honestly instead of pretending to uphold it.
One of the things I haven't been able to cover is what exactly the punishment WAS for those arrested for sleeping outside. A fine? Good luck collecting. A night in jail? In the proper conditions, that at least provides shelter. The city could simply build a whole lot of those pod things they have in Japanese airports, make restroom facilities and showers available nearby and sentence anyone arrested to a month or more of sleeping in same (though not requiring them to stay in them during the day. ) How do you like that, taxpayers????
I think the obvious lack of an openly announced counter solution is exactly the point for these Project 2025 collaborators. I hope I am proved wrong but I suspect we are looking at MAGA corporate run camps for the homeless to be economically farmed for cheap Labour and Big Pharma experimentation.
Thanks to SCOTUS, Florida’s new law criminalizing homelessness will now be safe.
A major GOP donor basically wrote the law criminalizing homelessness .Of course, Prager U was involved. So what is in it for them? Are they investors in prisons, mental health facilities. Obviously it’s not affordable housing.
“The Cicero Institute was founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, whose data mining products have been used by the CIA, the U.S. immigration agency, and local police departments. He derides a "homeless industrial complex," accusing advocates of prolonging the problem so they can keep their jobs.”
Shame there’s no law that would prohibit a sitting justice from selling his investment real estate on remarkably favorable terms to the managing partner of a big firm with business before the court. Not of course that such a thing would ever happen. Again.
Beautiful snark, Bill.
A new all time low. Lets just criminalize poverty instead of looking at the systems that lead to it. Is this still America?
Hell, it's ALWAYS been America, apart from 1936-1981.
I'm reminded of Ry Cooder's cover of a Depression Era song called "How Can you Keep on Moving?" Both the law protested in the song and the SCrOTUS decision entail Catch 22 attitudes toward the homeless. Here's Ry's version of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s89wz8BjXvw#:~:text=Provided%20to%20YouTube%20by%20Warner%20Records%20How,Into%20The%20Purple%20Valley%20%E2%84%97%201972%20Warner.
And here's the original, with background info: https://musicfromthedepression.com/how-can-you-keep-on-moving/#:~:text=The%20typical%20remark%20was%20%E2%80%9Cjust,attitude%20towards%20migrants%20that%20prevailed.
Let them eat cake; Alito,
Thomas, Kavanagh, Robert's,
Gorsach and sometimes
Barrett. They should be
careful with these rulings.
We MUST take the
presidency, the house &
senate. Reform this court!
Expand it so it's equal. Term
limits for them all and not 18
years! Look at the damage
that has been done in the
short period of the latest 3
Trump additions. The
Judiciary Committee needs
an overhaul too. Rescind
lifetime appointments to
SCOTUS and the othe courts.
Weed them out!
you go, girl.
If local police actually enforce* enforce laws against homelessness the more resourceful of the homeless will find ways to live in vacant buildings, abandoned vehicles, kiosks of any kind, rooftops, garages and elsewhere. Back in the 80's I worked in a one-story office building that unbeknownst to anyone also housed a homeless Viet Nam vet who was living in the space above the ceiling. He was able to sleep most of the day above a quiet unused part of the building, and at night he's wait until the janitorial staff left and then come down and survive on lunch items left behind in the brakeroom refrigerator and take care of hygiene in one of the large restrooms. He survived there for nearly nine months, including through a Michigan winter, before being discovered late at night by one of the managers who returned to pick up some work. I have a grudging admiration for that man because he was resourceful and did little harm, unless you're the type who'd truly miss half a bad ham sandwich and some limp pickles. (Most get the vapors if a power outage lasts beyond four hours, while the homeless survivors will inherit the Fury Road we seem to be headed to.)
On the otherhand, there is a longstanding encampment of homeless people two towns away in a swale between a freeway and an on ramp. It's widely known it's there. The police don't roust anyone because no one complains about them even though they become somewhat more visible due to campfires after foliage disappears in the fall. And, yes, the "problem" court must, absolutely must be addressed.
That law did not work out too well, as I recall..... I saw Biden at a rally in North Carolina today, being everything we wanted him to be on Thursday. What happened to that guy.....? Perhaps some time and more energetic appearances by Smokin' Joe will recover somewhat from the debate, but how sad that it happened the way it did.
I watched Biden today. He was on fire.🔥 Certainly boosted my spirits. Of course, much different venue/“moderators” and minus being attacked with rapid -fire ,bull @#$& lies. (Maybe why tSCOTUS didn’t ban bump stocks🤔)
Here’s the link for others .It starts about 1:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDKIILMeZfk
Interesting Jay Kuo said today when he read the actual transcripts, Biden comes off sounding fine while Trump sounded unhinged.
Like the Kennedy-Nixon debate - radio lisateners thought Nixon won, TV viewers the opposite.
My hope is that Biden realizes that appearances are important, and being prepared is no protection from a dam-break of BS from the greatest bullshitter of our time..... I suspect Biden was "over-prepared" - stuffed full of facts that he could not keep straight (like a student cramming for a test), so conscious of getting his agenda out that he lost the human qualities that make him Smokin' Joe..... Just don't make that bloody mistake again - the second debate will be much closer to the election and more people will be tuned in. Biden's "debate preparation team" should be sent to the Russian Front.....
It really was all about the optics. Nixon, with his 5 o'clock shadow and slightly sweaty sheen, looked shifty and thuggish. Kennedy looked handsome and "Presidential". Thus are our leaders elected....sigh.
Exactly. And what are the newsreaders going on and on about STILL? President Biden's "defiance" "on the ropes, trying to bounce back"...yada, yada, yad endless, senseless yadas. It's both nauseating and infuriating. If my stupid tv is still whole it's only because my shoulder hurts too much from trail clearing work, to throw anything at it.
Why can't the networks and other media-based professional critics criticize Trump for his ugly Gish gallop bullsh*t? Even his most outrageous lies haven't gotten much examination. Unlike the magnifying-glass parsing that Biden's performance has gotten.
To relieve some of the despair from Thursday (a thin straw indeed), here is a URL from the printed transcript of the debate. Biden won hands down on content; the Orange Rind won on stage presence.....it's long - curl up with a cuppa Joe (see what I did there.....): https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html
Seth Abrams posted the transcript of Biden's side, along with his analysis, in his Substack, "Proof." highly recommended.
Seymour Hersh, one of the best investigative journalists of the past 50 years, reports that Biden’s performance in the debate isn’t the worst problem, Biden’s befuddlement has been seen repeatedly in the White House over the past 6 months; there’s a full cover up in process.
https://open.substack.com/pub/seymourhersh/p/who-is-running-the-country?r=dw1an&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
a search on the subject finds related articles.
on The Hill, Becket Adams wrote a year ago about repeated gaffes: “one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the …question. Namely, ’Is Biden OK?’”
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4075227-we-need-a-serious-conversation-about-joe-bidens-brain/
Three weeks ago, Luther Ray Abel wrote in
the National Review of repeated instances: “…(there’s) evidence before one’s eyes that Biden is, at the very least, cognitively inconsistent…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-befuddled-genius/
Michael Graham of InsideSources.com predicted Biden’s debate performance two days before the debate:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/commentary-bidens-debate-blunder-showing-up-at-all-3075136/
thing is, most of those sources either tilt right or are proudly so. so their opinions mean nothing. I like a thought experiment I dreamt up, which is "let's say Biden has NOT been running things and it's a bunch of advisors. are they doing it well?" it seems to me they have in. and that scenario isn't really that different in the best of times. presidents (unless they're completely dysfunctional and crazy, much like, say, TFF) don'r run things by themselves. they have cabinets and experts (how many experts there will be after this fucking Chevron decision is uhhh...) advising them who actually know about the shit they're talking about. an unrelated point is that those advisors and experts tend NOT to be criminals and morons.
Hersch has been "out to lunch" for the past 10 years. The Hill is a right wing magazine and anti-Biden. The National Review has had its head up its ass since Buckley founded it. If you're going to support "sources" like these, you might have come to the Wong Foo King Substack.
Honestly - only watched a few minutes at the beginning - he sounds SICK - as if he has a chest cold. Probably from all the traveling around the world & too many activities! Where was his doctor in the days before the debate? Looked old? Hell, he looked sick.
The "news"??? people are freaking idiots. And the pair of "journalists?" who ran the debate? They should be ashamed. I watched Beau of the 5th Column & of course have read TC's posts. I'll watch a little more of the debate - recorded it on C-Span - have no interest in panels opinions.
My impression was that Biden was literally gobsmacked at all the lies Trump was spewing (if his lips moved, he was lying.....). Possibly the audience for this early debate was mostly already committed voters, not the ones who normally don't watch election coverage until Labor Day..... At the moment, it is what it is, but if Biden can summon up more energy like that at the rally just the following day, this disastrous first debate may not natter that much - but Smokin' Joe has a LOT of work to do.....
Yeah I agree but he really did sound like he had come down with some kind of cold.
Sorry - the SC is a bunch of boobs - just like their glorious leader!
yeah...when you read their decisions, you realize that these people are really not that bright. let's remember that most of them were on the "inside track" for a seat on SCOTUS. the right private schools, the right colleges, the right law schools (actually, it seems to come down to one nowadays). this is living in a bubble and, while they were able to rise to the top of this bubble, it's still not the real world. and having a perfect record on that narrow path of "elite legal education" says nothing about how smart they are about REAL SHIT. the only bright ones are (oddly enough?) Democratic appointments. I wonder why that is...
It was Gorsuch who mixed up nitrous oxide (laughing gas) with nitrogen oxide a pollutant & read the decision using the wrong one several times!
I would assume he had staff researching this?
Wish it were so easy. Kicking homeless people around doesn't seem right, but neither does having drug addicts and the mentally ill squatting in public places. So what is the solution for those who don't or can't acknowledge they need help?
You're entirely right. I'm old enough to remember when the problem didn't exist because people this mentally ill were in mental hospitals. The treatment professionals were right that they needed reform for better care, but "freeing the patients" as the radicals wanted didn't work because of NIMBY (in fact that's where the term came from) and Sainted Ray Gun saw closing the hospitals as a way to "shrink the gub'mint" and of course didn't put any money in the budget for any kind of treatment or outpatient care for the people turned out (because he was such a goddamned PIG) and they were left on their own as they have been now for 50 years, other than to be an issue for their "betters" to cudgel their opponents with, and how someone is surprised that this is what we get after all that is beyond my understanding. Then there are those who lose the life they had, victims of the rich stealing everything in sight, and you have the trifecta. And then you have motherfuckers like the five scum today, making it OK to kick people when they're down because the cruelty is the point of the modern (not" conservative movement.
The solution is to claw back the ill-gotten gains of the 1%, and provide help that allows the victims to get the care and help they need. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen because Republicans won't do it and the Professional Bed Wetters of "progressive" politics won't actually try.
Thanks TC. This should be printed for every damned Repubbie to read and re-read and re-re-read. Legislatures across the country shut down mental institutions and then refuse to put money into treatment centers and mental health outpatient services.
The mental institutions--many of them--were horror shows, but what Reagan did was worse. Cruelty is the point, a Republican specialty.
I’m just a bit younger so I don’t recall everything, but I suppose the legislature could have put money in the budget, or did they and Reagan veto it? Any way the lack of funding for community centers was shamelessly repeated throughout the country, not just California. So the former Governor aside, no one anywhere in any state, red, blue, purple or chartreuse seems to have done a G** d*** thing.
We must remember the ruling is specific to the case brought before the Court, nothing more. And especially under Roberts. It’s cuts both ways but their charter is not solving a social ills. That’s a question for the rest of us.
Did you not read where I pointed out that this is a problem both parties have contributed to?
I apologize. I did read that and should have acknowledged it.
Like immigration, there’s vested interests on either side of the equation who just want things the way they are for some reason or another. I suspect money is only one of those reasons. They may attack each other as distraction, but ignore the proverbial log in their own eye.
However in this case, one really can’t put the onus on SCOTUS. They were merely dealing with the case at hand within the charter they have. Like I said, it’s just not that easy.
Not fight another day, fight EVERY f**king day.
As to Gorsuch, he was groomed from infancy by his mother to be what he is. She was the original wicked witch of the West, devoid of any human characteristics. Her son is a proud droid with not a trace of humanity. These cretins need to be made irrelevant at the earliest possible moment.
They;'re getting more and more shameless are they not? Why don't they just throw the Constitution out the window and be done with it honestly instead of pretending to uphold it.
And now this, though not unexpected :
The New York Times
BREAKING NEWS
The greatest public service President Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not run for re-election, the editorial board writes.
<editorial@nytimes.com>. Hit the Sultzberger mother fuckers HARD!
I finally had my fill of these fuckwits when they put this up, and unsubscribed.
I hope no one listens to them.
One of the things I haven't been able to cover is what exactly the punishment WAS for those arrested for sleeping outside. A fine? Good luck collecting. A night in jail? In the proper conditions, that at least provides shelter. The city could simply build a whole lot of those pod things they have in Japanese airports, make restroom facilities and showers available nearby and sentence anyone arrested to a month or more of sleeping in same (though not requiring them to stay in them during the day. ) How do you like that, taxpayers????
I think the obvious lack of an openly announced counter solution is exactly the point for these Project 2025 collaborators. I hope I am proved wrong but I suspect we are looking at MAGA corporate run camps for the homeless to be economically farmed for cheap Labour and Big Pharma experimentation.
I can see that, sadly. After all, being homeless means you are worthless, right? Therefore exploitable.
After hearing the current idiocy regarding Biden's debate issue? Check this out - makes sense to me!
https://www.alternet.org/rnc-chair-biden-staff/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jun.29.2024_1.35pm
Thanks to SCOTUS, Florida’s new law criminalizing homelessness will now be safe.
A major GOP donor basically wrote the law criminalizing homelessness .Of course, Prager U was involved. So what is in it for them? Are they investors in prisons, mental health facilities. Obviously it’s not affordable housing.
“The Cicero Institute was founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, whose data mining products have been used by the CIA, the U.S. immigration agency, and local police departments. He derides a "homeless industrial complex," accusing advocates of prolonging the problem so they can keep their jobs.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1251405278/homeless-camping-ban-texas-cicero-states