More severe cuts in services coming from county for homeless programs. Jobs program passes in Senate.

News of the day relating to homelessness in Sacramento is mixed. There's some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that Sacramento County's budget problems continue and that services that affect poor people continue to be prime targets for cutting.

A Bee story today, "Sacramento County supervisors weigh $14 million in cuts, 111 layoffs," tells us $2 million may be cut from the Department of Human Services' budget for homeless services, a 10 percent reduction. Other cuts are likely to come from the budgets of Child Protective Services, the Probation Department, the Sheriff's Department, and the District Attorney's Office.

The cuts are necessary for this fiscal year [from July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010] due to a $10 million shortfall in anticipated property and sales taxes, and a $3.8 million fix to shore-up reserves and aright interfund transfers.

Good news of the day is Senate passage of a $15 billion jobs-creation measure put forward by the Democrats. Five Republicans, including newly seated Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown broke ranks with their party to make passage of the bill possible.

According to a NYTimes article, this jobs bill, if enacted, would "give companies who hire unemployed Americans an exemption from paying payroll taxes on those workers through the end of this year. It also provides a $1,000 tax credit to employers who keep new workers on the payroll for at least for 52 weeks."

Preacher tells us Obama is a forebearer of End Times

I first must report, before writing what I'm about to, that a great good majority of the preaching at Union Gospel Mission is fine on many levels and comports to the mainstream of Christianity, as I understand it.

It remains rare that some yahoo with bacon strips in his hair steps up to the cross-shaped lectern and spews a bunch of hate or nonsense.

The latest in the hate / nonsense category comes from a fellow from Epic Bible College [until recently, its name was Trinity Life Bible College] who made the very direct implication, if not the very explicit statement, that Barrack Obama is the Antichrist, that forebodes End Times

While I have doubts about a lot of what even the many many noble and hardy and sane mainstream preachers say, it may not surprise y'all to know that I disagree with Pastor Wallace's assessment of our president. I do not think that he is the Antichrist.

The circumstance of Pastor Wallace's dire assessment came as he was wound up making a claim that the world was entering End Times. One of the indicators of End Times, he told us, was the establishment of a one-world government and the arrival of the Antichrist. Barrack Obama, he immediately then said, was hailed often as the Messiah.

Now it may be that during 2008, as the Presidential election approached, Obama, highly regarded as someone who would save our country from the dire circumstance where George W. Bush had taken us, was a savior, of sorts. There is a meaning of Messiah, spelled in lowercase, that is not referential to the Christian savior. A messiah, in a secular meaning that it has, is someone who delivers us from a bad situation [meaning # 3, below].  Here, the definition of Messiah/messiah from dictionary.com:

Mes·si·ah

   /mɪˈsaɪə/ Show Spelled[mi-sahy-uh] –noun

1. the promised and expected deliverer of the Jewish people.

2. Jesus Christ, regarded by Christians as fulfilling this promise and expectation. John 4:25, 26.
3. (usually lowercase) any expected deliverer.
4. (usually lowercase) a zealous leader of some cause or project.
5. (italics) an oratorio (1742) by George Frideric Handel.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote something pithy that speaks to the wisdom that we shouldn't idolotrize words (like messiah/Messiah): "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."

Pastor Wallace also told us that America was being taken over by China. He seemed, clearly, to be referring to the large number of US Bonds the Asian country holds, and not to the large amount of products made in China available at Dollar Stores in the United States.

Understand that China holds American bonds and as is the case with any common bondholder cannot demand a preemptive payment. The only thing China might do is start selling those bonds on the market in large number.

According to Gary Burness of the think tank Brookings:

[China] currently owns almost 10% of the total [US] Treasury debt held by the public. This is slightly less than the percentage held by Japan and residents of Japan, but substantially more than the percentage held by any other country. I'm inclined to think a Chinese sell-off of U.S. Treasuries would on balance benefit the United States.

China has not been buying much in the way of United States bonds lately. And THAT presents no problems for anybody.

Burtless goes on the write:

If the dollar fell in value compared with other currencies [because of a swift China sell-off] I think we would see a faster U.S. recovery, especially in manufacturing. A precipitous and disorderly fall in the dollar could take a terrible toll on worldwide confidence and hence on the economic recovery, but an orderly decline would spark revival in a number of U.S. industries.

In other words, us owing China a lot of money isn't a scarry problem. China, though growing in economic stature, is still puny compared to the mighty United States.

And if China were to sell out its US Bond holdings, it would do vastly more damage to itself, and likely none to the US.

Maybe End Times are near, but that isn't connected to our President or China.

Note:  Union Gospel Mission allows churches and other missionary groups to speak before the congregation that gathers there so long as they comport to a literal interpretation of the Bible.  Preachers or speakers from Trinity Life [now, Epic] have been excellent in the past.  Ron Smith, an up-and-coming preacher who recently graduated from Epic/Trinity Life is highly, highly, highly favored by the Union Gospel Mission crowd for his excellence.  Smith graduated from the mission's Rehab program approx. five years ago.

Politicians / Religious Poobahs / Safe Ground breakfast in the Grand Hall

This morning there was a breakfast, sponsored by the Interfaith Service Bureau, in the Grand Hall, that brought together slightly-raggedy homeless people and well-dressed politicians and religious leaders and assorted other mucky-mucks.

With Libby Fernandez prancing around, acting like the Grand Poobah, and a table near the entrance for SafeGround to advertise their supposed yummy goodness, it was difficult not to experience the event as more of a donations grab by the Leftist wing of the homeless-aid industry than any kind of wisdom exchange ― which is what it all, sort of, build itself up to be.

A tasty meal, certainly there was, with scrambled eggs and potatoes and muffins and bagels and coffee. Among those serving us, buffet style, where pleasant police-men and -women in full regalia.

At big round tables with white cloths and fancy water glasses the grandly housed and we, the homeless rabble, rubbed elbows. To the left of me at my table was a housed lady in red with whom I got into a discussion later that turned a bit bitter before calming down and us making nice.

There were three primary speakers who for the most part spoke too slow and said nothing that added up to much. [Though I must confess that, point in fact, I heard little of the third speaker's words, what with all my chewing and conversing during that period with the Lady in Red.]

State Senator Darrell Steinberg spoke first and was somehow caught up in discussing the noble homeless-help activities of his daughter when she was a preteen. The connect between the homeless and lepers/outcasts was made which was not comforting nor high-minded as neither was the idea (that Steinberg put out there) that it is somehow swell to think, when seeing a homeless person, "there but for the grace of God, go I." Yeah, well, Screw you, Darrell Steinberg.

Mr. Steinberg was followed on the podium by Pastor Sorenson from St. John's Lutheran Church. Both Sorenson and Steinberg spoke exclusively to the well-dressed about legislation and church leading and their own great good Pharisee-like ego-wonderfulness to the applause of all, including that of us homeless there (which could have all just as well have been cardboard cutouts and saved ISB money on breakfast-fixings expenditures).

As this blogpost may tell you by now, I was doing a lot of grumbling while enjoying my eggs and bagel. My homeless brethren, meantime, were polite and respectful and eating hardy.

The Lady in Red accosted me for my rude grumblings and occasional boistrous booing. I'm tired of complaining and grumbling, like that that you're doing, she told me. We're engaged in efforts to get things done, to actually address homelessness. To push forward.

I responded, nobly, as I'm apt to, about the way-forward-defeating problems that there are and the crassness and corruption and truthiness and Left-wing nuttiness, but to not much good effect.

As our conversation ground onward, we came to see we were in agreement on a lot. Before the Lady in Red left, after first pulling a french fry (from a McDonald's meal, long ago) out of her red fancy-jacket pocket, things were respectful and nice, again.

A little later, I caught the attention of Dean Brian Baker of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and he sat with me where the Lady in Red had been and we talked for an extended period. He telling me what his intentions are in motivating his congregants to do good works; me telling him how screwed up and different things are than the public is led to think out in Homeless World [from my knowledge base and experience] and how frustrated that makes me and others.

It may be, from the dean's and my discussion, a means to communicate the location of emergency shelter possibilies for us homeless will emerge.  Nowadays, unlike winters past, there is no set "overflow" shelter and times when Trinity Episcopal or the Delany Center or a Lutheran church provide a floor for people to sleep on does not "get out there," letting the most deprived and most unprepared know of a night's safe haven from cold or wetness.

... tell us about your difficulties ...

During an interview by Oprah, published in the March issue of O Magazine, Thich Nhat Hanh, the well-known and very well-regarded Vietnamese Buddhist monk said this:

Nhat Hanh: Yes. We should be able to say this: "Dear friends, dear people, I know that you suffer. I have not understood enough of your difficulties and suffering. It's not our intention to make you suffer more. It is the opposite. We don't want you to suffer. But we don't know what to do and we might do the wrong thing if you don't help us to understand. So please tell us about your difficulties. I'm eager to learn, to understand." We have to have loving speech. And if we are honest, if we are true, they will open their hearts. Then we practice compassionate listening, and we can learn so much about our own perception and their perception. Only after that can we help remove wrong perception.

Yes, it is vital that we try to be mature ― that is, speak from a stance of maturity of character ― recognizing that humanity is shared.

When I complain about Safe Ground, as I must, a "rant and carp" aspect of my character gets exposed. I am not carefully being loving and patient.  I am frustrated with the culture of, centrally, Loaves & Fishes which is poky and inattentive. "Sleepily malicious" is perhaps the best term that applies.  It is a place where unidentified dead trees fall from the sky.

The lovingness of Nhat Hahn and other Buddhist teachers is something I both deeply admire and am suspicious of.  Change happens only from seeing and dealing with difficulties. and lovingness all too easily metastasizes into a sugary gloss which is the opponent of the change that is necessary for betterment. 

It's hard to drive while wearing rose-colored glasses.  All the jaywalking pedestrians look like fluffy stuffed toys.

L.A.Times puts Peterson crime and merit of early-release program in perspective

In contrast to the Bee (I'm sorry to say), the Los Angeles Times has a proper understanding of the Kevin Peterson incident and puts early-release of inmates in perspective.

You may recall that Peterson was released sixteen days early from the downtown jail and within twelve hours was re-arrested for an assault on a Loaves & Fishes counsellor. SacHo has blogged about the matter twice previously: "Trouble in Homeless World: An alleged crime on North C Street" and "The Bee: Scare tactics and hypocrisy."

The L. A. Times put matters in proper perspective in an editorial, today. Here a snip at its end:

[The application of the early-release legislation] is a mess, and [Attny General Jerry] Brown is empowered to fix it by explaining how the law should be applied -- yet so far, his office has been silent. He needs to address the issue soon.

But we can't end there without decrying the demagoguery over Peterson. The purpose of last year's prison reform law was to cut the state inmate population by about 6,500. It does this in part through good-behavior credits, but mainly by revising parole rules to stop returning nonviolent offenders to prison for minor parole violations.

In theory, this should actually reduce crime, because it will free up parole officials to focus more attention on truly dangerous people. Yet the crimes that are avoided because parole officers are working more efficiently don't make headlines. That's why it's foolish to set corrections policy based on sensational cases. California's efforts to reduce its prison population should be judged on their effect on overall crime, not their portrayal on the evening news.

Of course, the incident at Loaves & Fishes is awful. And it is only by weighing the bad against the good that we might understand that the early-release program has net benefits. It's a terrible calculus: Allowing some crime to happen to prevent other crimes. But life and budgetting is like that. We can only hope that legislators and Attorney Generals will find what is best for society, on the whole.

While I would bet that "incarcerating less" is a good idea, in theory [since the USA incarcerates rather spectacularly more than other First World countries with there being no demonstrable benefit], I would like someone to ACTUALLY DO the terrible calculus in a comprehensive study, that looks at all factors, and tries to objectively SEE if the early-release program is a good idea, or not.

Jimmy Roughton wows Union Gospel Mission crowd

Jimmy Roughton speaking before the Union Gospel Mission congregation. [Photo kiped from the UGM website.]

We were told beforehand by Brother Bill and, again, in the course of things, that Jimmy Roughton, is nearing the 21st anniversary of the day in his life that he left drugging and the street for being a Christian, and a year thereafter, becoming a neophyte preacher and the beginnings of being a dedicated, reliable fixture on the UGM calendar.

I don't want to overstate it, so I'll put it this way: There were a few of us ― modestly, at very least that many ― who were awed by Jimmy Roughton's presentation last night at the Union Gospel Mission and were robust in our applause (if not cheers) and voicing of superlatives.

Roughton [pronounced such that the first syllable rhymes with "wow."] always delivers an interesting, thoughtful and entertaining sermon. I've written about him about seven times earlier in my other blog, Homeless Tom. In one blogpost I wrote this:

[A]lways, Roughton displays amazing passion and showmanship. He is a riveting speaker; he is loud, passionate, with grand gestures; his eyes dart as he makes contact with individuals in his audience. He doesn’t make use of a text; he doesn’t need one – he knows his stuff and what he is going to say and speaks without pauses or stumbles. He begins on the pulpit at the lectern, but as his message unspools he makes his way down to the chapel floor.

All of the above was true last night, but my next sentence, which follows, in that old post wasn't true last night: "A part of his charm is that Roughton comically – mockingly – does a good job imitating classes of people: False Christians, atheists and rationalizing substance abusers are prime targets."

Jimmy may have done an imitation or two last night, but dividing the world (and having a foil to mock) wasn't how the sermon was set up. Last night, Jimmy was fully mature*, delivering a sermon that was wholly gracious and passionately desirous that the audience and everyone get the best from their lives (and afterlives). Nothing was held back.

"I don't want any of you to be religious," he told us. "What I want for you is to have a relationship with God. … God has placed eternity in our hearts. We know there is something on the other side other than nothing."

The above sentiment is very close to something I had heard from my second-favorite mission preacher, Pastor Brett of Vacaville Bible College, just over a month ago. But Ingalls left me hanging: So what IS this relationship? Is God/Jesus physically, literally there, as the lyrics to a UGM faved hymn, "In the Garden," suggest?

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The son of God discloses

And He walks with me
And He talks with me
And He tells me I am His own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known

In his sermon yesterday, Roughton was explicit in expressing his experience of a relationship with God/Jesus and its implications. While I remain plenty fuzzy on all of this, I was given some sense of what the core of what the preachers — or, at least, Jimmy, last night — was talking about.

"Relationship with God didn't change my life, it changed me," he told us. "I stopped chasing a bag [meaning marijuana, or another mind-altering, addictive substance]; started chasing a book [The Bible]. … It was like God opened me up and began pouring Himself into my skull.

"Blessings come when we allow God in to work His will in [loving relationships] with other people." Jimmy added, pithily: "Let go and let God." He spoke of the irony of his Christian life as being one where things, including big-ticket physical comforts like a car and house, came to him now that he no longer keenly covetted them.

"You've got to give yourself away," he said. "Be in relationships without expectations and with a lot of forgiveness. Seek a relationship with God and with God's people."

Jimmy told us that that whom we are changed into from having a relationship with God is the full expression of whom we were created to be. "He created me to be me," he said. He created you to be you.

Though on the page/monitor it sounds critical, it was not when Jimmy said: "The problem with Christians is Christians." His point, in elaboration, was that Chistians often make an effort at being saved, but do so without a change of attitude. People making the effort to become Christian will say the right words but quickly fail to take the meaning to heart and be open to feeling different and not falling back into their old habits.

After his death, Jimmy told us, he didn't want to be remembered for his resume. He wanted to be remembered for some accomplishment at the goal he now had. Let it be said of Jimmy: "He encouraged people and he loved people."
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* When I write "mature," I am referring to egoity, which is something I read about these days, and not faith or spirituality which I know less about. Also, while I was touched by Jimmy's sermon last night, I don't expect that he has to hit a homerun every time and that every sermon be inspiring without some sometimes-healthy complaining/mocking.
Also: Though it may not seem like I recognize that critiquing Christian sermons is way over my head and arrogant on my part, I do recognize this. I do. I do.

Gabor Maté on Addiction

A new edition of Gabor Maté's book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction is getting attention in the buddhoblogosphere because of its insightfulness on matters of addiction, using Buddhist constructs.

Here, words by the author as presented at the amazon.com webspace:

I've written In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts because I see addiction as one of the most misunderstood phenomena in our society. People ― including many people who should know better, such as doctors and policy makers ― believe it to be a matter of individual choice or, at best, a medical disease. It is both simpler and more complex than that.

Addiction, or the capacity to become addicted, is very close to the core of the human experience. That is why almost anything can become addictive, from seemingly healthy activities such as eating or exercising to abusing drugs intended for healing. The issue is not the external target but our internal relationship to it. Addictions, for the most part, develop in a compulsive attempt to ease one’s pain or distress in the world. Given the amount of pain and dissatisfaction that human life engenders, many of us are driven to find solace in external things. The more we suffer, and the earlier in life we suffer, the more we are prone to become addicted.

The inner city drug addicts I work with are amongst the most abused and rejected people amongst us, but instead of compassion our society treats them with contempt. Instead of understanding and acceptance, we give them punishment and moral disapproval. In doing so, we fail to recognize our own deeply rooted problems and thereby forego an opportunity for healing not only for them, the extreme addicts, but also for ourselves as individuals and as a culture.

My book, in short, is an attempt to bring light to core issues shrouded in darkness. The many positive responses I’ve received encourage me to believe that I’ve succeeded in making a contribution toward that goal.

And, there is this which I snagged from William Harryman's Integral Options Cafe blog, in a post titled "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction - by Gabor Maté." One of the questions from a Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal interview:

Q. What does the book title In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts mean?

DR. GABOR MATÈ: It's a Buddhist phrase. In Buddhist Psychology, there are a number of realms that human beings cycle through. All of us. One is the Human Realm, which is our ordinary selves. The Hell Realm is that of unbearable rage, fear, terror, you know, these emotions that are difficult to handle. The Animal Realm is our instincts and our [hate] and our passions.

Now, the Hungry Ghost Realm, the creatures in it are depicted as people with large, empty bellies, small mouths, and scrawny, thin necks. They can never get enough satisfaction. They can never fill their bellies. They're always hungry, always empty, always seeking it from the outside. That speaks to a part of us that I have, and everybody in our society has, where we want satisfaction from the outside, where we're empty, where we want to be soothed by something in the short term. But we can never feel that, or fulfill that, insatiety from outside.

The addicts are in that realm all the time. Most of us are in that realm some of the time. And my point really is, is that there's no clear distinction between the identified addict and the rest of us. There's just a continuum on which we all may be found. They're on it because they suffered more than most of us.

Weird Homeless Communist Theatre, Part II

Merin sues again, but to what real purpose?

An article in the Bee, today, tells us that Mark Merin is suing again ― using the homeless, again, to enrich he and his wife ― but where, O where, will this take us , the homeless, now?

Close followers of Homeless World Sacramento will recall that last summer Merin set up a homeless encampment on a tiny parcel of property [something like an eighth of an acre] he owns on C Street, near 13th. About thirty people settled in on the parcel, utilizing camping equipment that Loaves & Fishes provided.

At first, the parcel was leased to Loaves & Fishes such that (it appeared) the Merins would have legal cover, but the fraudulent-lease idea was was soon dropped.

The parcel, in an industrialized area and next to the home of Pedro Hernandez, was for many many reasons an impossible location for homeless people to set up housekeeping. Mr. Hernandez was continually being harrassed and subjected to lots of noise; zoning laws were being violated; and too many people were residing on too small a space.

Merin is now suing "on behalf of 23 homeless men and women [who were at the C Street parcel ... asking] that the city stop enforcing its 'cruel and inhumane' anti-camping ordinance, and [seeking] unspecified monetary damages. It names the city of Sacramento and the Sacramento Police Department as defendants."

While it is obscene that wherewithal-lacking homeless people have few options (and, sometimes, next to no options) on where to spend the night, and are continually harrassed by police, the C Street parcel wasn't a serious possible spot for homeless people to stay: it was really just the setting for Weird Homeless Communist Theatre, as this blog faithfully reported on Sept 4, 2009.

From that early blogpost:

According to today's news, 16 or 17 of the homeless folk camping at the so-called Safe Ground* campsite on C Street near 13th were arrested and their tents and belongings seized.

It's an unhappy situation. Had the campers been arrested for doing their best to live in a city/county that allows no space for them, I would be outraged. But, truly, the event is not that: It is orchestrated political theatre, motivated in big part by the vanity of a far-left-wing lawyer and homeless-aid-industry narcissism where homeless people are manipulated and used to spur donations, and to give homeless-aid nonprofit executives liberal cache on the progressive cocktail-party circuit. [That's my informed guess, at least.]

As incredible as it sounds, the "Safe Ground movement" is involved with communist politics. It's 1917 all over again at Loaves & Fishes.

Cathleen Williams, an attorney herself, wife of "Safe Ground movement" lead attorney Mark Merin, has called for "a revolution" passionately citing an article in the August issue of People's Tribune, "Revolutionaries Must Rally the People to a Vision of a New World." The article calls for "a society where everyone able to do so would have the opportunity to make a contribution to society, and would in turn receive everything they needed to lead a civilized life. Anyone unable to contribute because of age, illness or disability would be taken care of. All would have health care. There would be no unemployment, no poverty." If that's not equivalent to Karl Marx's communist utopia vision of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," I don't know what is.

People's Tribune calls for an end to capitalism and advancing technology. Cathleen Williams has written perhaps ten articles for People's Tribune; one where her association with markmerin.com is indicated. Ms. Williams's poem "Food" ends with the sentiment that if extreme poverty meant enough to the reader, she/he "would bring [the capitalist] system down. [Prior posts in this blog have been, in part, about meetings re Safe Ground led by Ms. Williams: See "Mayor's Homeless Task Force envisions legal homeless encampment next spring" on Aug 11, 2009, and "Common ground on safe ground. Common sense, not communism." on Aug 18, 2009.]

Paula Lomazzi who is the doer-of-all-things administrator of the organization SHOC [Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee] is proud to have written one rather benign article for the publication in its August 2009 issue.

Several members of the homeless community that have been recruited by SHOC associate themselves with communist ideas and are involved in the Safe Ground movement. John Kraintz who is pictured often and quoted invariably when Sacramento homelessness is written about these days sees events in terms of 1930s America and the need for an aggressive labor organizing movement. He's angry, he has his gripes, and can find no merit in thinking that doesn't jive with his own.

Kraintz sees himself as having enormous influence in the movement, telling me that if he chose to exercise it, he could have his way on all matters that come up relating to Safe Ground. I have told him that the connection with communism is likely to waylay the effort for a legal homeless encampment in Sacramento, but Kraintz insists he will do nothing to blunt the communist connection, though it appears that the matter is getting much discussion in the many committees relating to the movement behind the scenes.

The matter of the legitimacy of the encampment on C Street now moves on to the courts, even as the "encampment" is a prop put together, mostly, by Loaves & Fishes, and not a "naturally occurring" [if I can call it that] circumstance. Homeless people are pawns in a concocted situation used to force arrests and spring Mark Merin to engage in courtroom theatre.

Instead of acting maturely, instead of appreciating the needs of the general community during these difficult economic times, the Sacramento homeless-help industry has its issue to stir resentment and prompt past liberal donors on its lists to give yet more.

Instead of finding the very very best property in the city or county for a beta peaceful homeless encampment, instead of continuing to work with the mayor, the Safe Ground movement has chosen the 1960s route of gripe and protest instead of nurturing the hope for real progress and success.

Because the culture of the movement is to always always see no merit in the stance of those that disagree with it and to feel spectacularly aggrieved and to offend the public as much as possible and to perceive themselves as white as snow it should fail quickly.

BTW, my own 'politics' are to the left. I would describe myself as being liberal with a few beliefs that rate as moderate. I've never voted for a Republican in 37 years of voting. Every communist state has been a failure that quickly became an oppressive dictatorship. Truly, 100 million died in the gulags or from the guns or were otherwise crushed by communist regimes in the 20th Century. You'd think that lesson couldn't be quickly forgotten.

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* * I say "so-called" since the idea of "safe ground" is supposed to mean sanctioned by the city or county, whereas the parcel at C & 13th is not sanctioned.

Strategies of Confusion: Duckspeak in Homeless World and the Mayor's Office effort to misinform

Duckspeak is a Newspeak term meaning literally to quack like a duck or to speak without thinking. Duckspeak can be either good or "ungood" (bad), depending on who is speaking, and whether what they are saying is in following with the ideals of Big Sister. To speak rubbish and lies may be ungood, but to speak rubbish and lies for the good of "The Party" may be good. In the appendix to 1984, Orwell explains:

Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak […]. Like various words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment.¹

A less literary term covering much the same ground as duckspeak is "thought-terminating cliché," which was used by Robert Jay Lifton in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.

A thought-terminating cliché ― "safe ground" being the prime sedicious example in Homeless World Sacramento ― though valid in certain contexts, is applied as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic in a way that is thought-terminating.

Quoting Lifton, "The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any analysis."

The term safe ground began as a term meaning a parcel of property where homeless people might safely, legally camp without fear of being harrassed or rousted by the police.  Meanings applied to the term have since expanded rapaciously.  Below are at least some of the meanings now given to the term safe ground [or, Safe Ground; or SafeGround] by the several ideologically-totalist nonprofit organizations in Homeless World:

• A parcel of property where homeless people might safely, legally camp without fear of being harrassed or rousted by police.
• The effort to bring about a safe, legal place for homeless people to camp. [Also known by the rarely-used (abandoned?) original name: Safe Ground Campaign.]
• A national effort to cause a revolution in America that would end capitalism, cease technological progress, guarantee jobs for everybody (and, incidentally, create a safe, legal place for homeless people to camp. [Also known more expansively as the Safe Ground Movement ― which is associated with the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, formerly known at the Communist League.]
• An illegal encampment, used as a focus of protest. [For example, the encampment that was on C Street, on property owned by Mark Merin.]
• A utopian plan or vision of a legal campground or community of domes or sheds where homeless people might reside.  ["Eden" being an example, here.]
• Formerly known as A Moveable Sleep, a program where homeless people camp at a variety of locations, moving every night to (possibly) not violate Sacramento County's strict anti-camping ordinance.
• An organization of unknown organizational status and without declared administration or persons responsible for it. [See the Safe Ground website.]
• "Protecting the rights of homeless people."  The presumptive assumption that all homeless people are indebted to safe ground and its benefactors for their well-being. This "claim" has donation-gathering [i.e., donor-swindling] "benefits."
• Last-resort places where homeless people can get shelter on very cold or rainy nights, necessitated by the collapse of Winter shelter. [Delany Center and Trinity Cathedral being sites I'm aware of.]
• Update 3/6/10:  According to the first line of the introduction to a 75-page report from the National Coalition for the Homeless: "The journalist Lisa Ling presented a special report for the Oprah Winfrey Show in March of 2009 focusing on Sacramento’s tent city along the American River, now known as Safe Ground."  Thus, Tent City is now known RETROACTIVELY as Safe Ground. Sheesh.  Before long, everything will be called Safe Ground, including cattle feces, chicken soup and hair pins.

At the mayor's office, it was determined that they would obscure the truth about homelessness in their Conference of Mayors Report.

This is what the report said [which you can find in "Hunger and Homelessness Survey, December 2009," on the page numbered 42 (or, on page 45 of the 100-page download)]:

Profile of Homelessness in Sacramento:

Sacramento reported a 31 percent decrease in the number of homeless individuals on a single night in January 2009 compared to January 2008. This decrease was attributed to the city’s success in increasing the number of permanent housing units available for chronically homeless single adults. However, Sacramento reported a 14 percent increase in homeless families during this same period. City officials attributed the increase to a combination of unemployment, foreclosures, and cuts in state funding for social services. One Sacramento shelter reported a 300-person waiting list for persons in families. The unmet need for shelter could increase in 2010 as budget issues have prompted the city to discontinue funding for emergency shelter. The housing crisis has also made it more difficult for the city to build additional permanent supportive housing units.

Sacramento was awarded approximately $6 million through the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP). The city will use this money to prevent homelessness among at-risk families and move families that are in homeless shelters into permanent housing. One bright spot in the housing crisis is that the number of vacant housing units is making it easier to find and lease rental units for homeless families.

The mayor's office, in the person of Andrea Corso, defends this misinformation that creates a complete misimpression about homelessness in Sacramento.

Ms. Corso emailed this sentiment defending the indefenseable:

The information submitted by Sacramento was the DHA Report on Street Count 2009. You are correct that the 31% decrease is for chronically homeless individuals--as indicated by the following sentence in the summary. We would be happy to see the word "chronically" also inserted in the first sentence.

The same report also reports a 14% increase in families who are homeless. The DHA street count definition does count those in transitional housing as homeless.

The TRUTH [which ought to be of some interest to Ms. Corso and our Harvard Divinity school-graduate mayor], is that the numbers of homeless individuals increased [though less than 5%], according to the 2009 Street Count stats the report referenced, and that the idea that Sacramento was ground zero of a Hooverville of families was a total lie, perpetuated by the Bee and other media - local, national and international - last spring. [See the SacHo blogpost "The Sacramento Homeless Emergency That Wasn't There."]

The not-funny thing is that last spring-fading-into-summer the mayor mostly wasted a million dollars extending last year's winter shelter into summer to (I thought) obliterate the Hooverville image of Sacramento to make our metropolis seem more appealing to business interests (and, thus, create jobs).

I wrote the mayor and the unfortunate Ms. Corso in response to the Corso email:

The point of any summary of data should be to reflect the circumstance the full data represents most accurately in order to best enlighten others. The point should decidedly not be one of playing with statistics to misinform.

Whereas it is understandable that there has been a focus to house the chronically homeless, the overall circumstance relating to homelessness in Sacramento did not improve in a significant way such that a 31% drop in a subset of the data should have been the lead detail of the mayor's summary.

The summary should have been written to provide a correct impression to readers -- who include experts on homelessness minutia and the lay public.

I believe that what happened comparing the situation on the street, 2009 vs 2008, assuming that the data is fairly accurate, is that homelessness increased slightly and that homelessness among families increased slightly but was significantly mitigated by an increase in transitional housing availability.

-----
¹ From wikipedia's entry on Duckspeak on its page List of Newspeak words.

The Bee: Scare tactics and hypocrisy

"The thing that has not speeded up is the capacity to actually think through something."
 ― Ellen Goodman quoted in the chapter "Saving the News" in the book Losing the News.

One day following their scare article about an early-released jail inmate who may have attempted to rape a Loaves & Fishes mental-health counselor, the Bee printed a Board editorial that condemns those resorting to scare tactics relating to the early-release program ― but without mention of their own article which is very possibly the principal scare-mongering source of alarm.

The article about the possible attempted rape is titled "Inmate arrested for alleged rape attempt hours after early release" online.

Kevin Peterson who was released from the downtown county jail facility in the early-morning hours of Jan. 25, sixteen days in advance of the end of his sentence, sought counselling at Loaves & Fishes, where there was a fracas, and Peterson was arrested and later booked on charges of attempted rape, sexual battery, false imprisonment and violating the terms of his probation.

The Bee article about this begins thus:

It was probably just a matter of time. But less than one day?

Sacramento sheriff's officials say that's how long it took for an inmate who was set free Monday under an early-release plan to be arrested again, this time on a charge of attempted rape.

The incident prompted immediate outrage from groups opposed to the new state law aimed at reducing prison populations by gradually releasing nonviolent, low-level offenders who earn extra credits for participating in educational and other programs.

"Our greatest fear has occurred almost immediately after the early release of these inmates," said Christine Ward of the Crime Victims Action Alliance.

The next day's Bee Board editorial, "Editorial: Don't let hype kill options to prison" says this:

A hullabaloo ensued ... when 21 counties, including Sacramento, interpreted the new [early- release] law as allowing them to apply expanded good time retroactively to jail inmates. Given budget constraints and overcrowding, they jumped on this opportunity without preparing adequately for it.

The predictable result: One Sacramento jail inmate who was set free 16 days early made his way to a drop-in mental health program for homeless people, allegedly lunged at a worker and was arrested on a charge of attempted rape. Unfortunately, the usual groups that oppose the new law are using this incident to discredit it.

If this inmate had been released 16 days later, would it have made a difference? Not likely. What might have made a difference: The Sacramento Sheriff's Department should have given a heads-up to city police and others. This didn't happen. Sheriff John McGinness acknowledges the error.

Sacramento County released about 50 more people in a single day than it would have under the old law, a number that officials expect to flatten out over time.

As McGinness told us, "This is not a humongous difference. … The good people of the Golden State ought to get used to the idea of reduced rate of incarceration for lawlessness, because the cost is becoming prohibitive."

Californians need to make better use of cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, such as work release, electronic monitoring, drug court intensive supervision and day reporting. It's time to get smart on crime instead of resorting to alarmism.

While there were individuals and groups, like Christine Ward of the Crime Victims Action Alliance, sounding shrill, unwarranted words of alarm, the Bee served as the megaphone for Ward.   Indeed, the Bee's reporters possibly alerted Ward to the situation and sought an expected (i.e., hyped) quote.

So, instead of being concerned about the dangers of shrill, hype-eager crime-watcher groups, perhaps there is a real danger we should be on guard about: shrill hypocrisy-spewing local newspapers.

How's this for the beginning of a editorial about the Bee editorial?

It was probably just a matter of time. But in just one day?

Sacramento Bee readers noticed that's how long it took for an article printed in the newspaper to raise alarm that the Bee Editorial Board deplored.  But the board conveniently overlooked the elephant in the room:  the Bee article that alarmed citizenry.

The incident prompted immediate outrage from readers opposed to hypocricy in their local newspaper.

"Our greatest fear has occurred almost immediately," said Bee reader John Doe of the Bee Victims of Hypocrisy Action Alliance.

Loaves & Fishes was closed today, offering little forenotice of closure

Typical.

Even though homeless people can have to walk long distances far out of their way to get there, Loaves & Fishes often closes for a day, or two, or three, without giving much in the way of notice to its denizen. It happened again today.

For the purpose of a staff retreat, Loaves & Fishes was closed.

Wouldn't you think that a staff retreat would be precisely the kind of thing for which notice to denizens could be given? should be given? I would think that. But no.

You have to wonder why Loaves & Fishes is even in the homeless-help business, its administrators being so negligent and being so seemingly naive of the challenges and frustrations of being homeless. Maybe they should change their focus from charity to the manufacture of cocktail dresses or somesuch.

Canning sardines, maybe?

Churning tutti frutti ice cream, you think?

Truly, I think Loaves & Fishes' mucky mucks only just like the concept of helping homeless people. The actual people themselves, they don't like much.

Maybe those administrators and bored board members should run the communist party. It's something they're interested in AND it's something, based on exhibited skills, they might put right out of business.

I was at Loaves until about 8:30AM yesterday and knew of no notice of closure.  It was only last night, at the Union Gospel Mission, that I learned that the L&F facility wouldn't open today.  Of course, they did serve lunch, as they do on every day except Thanksgivings, unfailingly.  But as to whether the rest of the programs at the compound will be open or will be closed on weekdays, you show up and have to take your chances.

It's a crapshoot.

Today, they were closed.

Trouble in Homeless World: An alleged crime on North C Street

	Picture of Kevin Peterson that appeared with the Bee article, "Inmate arrested for alleged rape attempt hours after early release."

An article in today's Bee tells us of the arrest of Kevin Peterson just hours after "an early-release ... on a charge of attempted rape."

I know Kevin, a little. He stayed at the mission for a few weeks, and, after he left, I saw and talked with him some in and around Friendship Park.

The Bee article, because of the charges, and from not knowing Kevin, gives the impression that he is some sort of beast of prey. That doesn't reconcile with the Kevin that I know. I know him as a particularly gentle and self-conscious fellow, young and handsome [especially so when shaved and with short hair as when I was first aquainted with Kevin] ― but with mental-health issues he talked about, and that were sometimes evident, that troubled him and made him at times withdrawn.

It is clear that many of the fellows I know in Homeless World have back stories and dark sides I am fully unaware of. And I have to suppose that many of them are archly not whom they seem to me to be ― or, that they have many aspects or subpersonalities (good and bad) that I am never occasioned to see during the banter around the mission or in Friendship Park or out on the street.

Still, the Bee story is significantly wrong because it targets Kevin as a prime, egregious example of a failed reduced-sentencing plan.  The full story of Kevin's situation is atypical and, thus, doesn't deserve being targetted as it is by the Bee.

I don't mean to dismiss nor diminish the hurt Kevin caused by his actions on a recent Tuesday afternoon "in the 1300 block of North C Street" ― which is on the Loaves & Fishes compound.  Clearly, it seems, it is not safe for Kevin to be loosed upon the world without addressing his mental problems or his criminality.

Still, if Kevin is an example of anything, it is first that of a mentally-troubled man who has been abandoned to the streets because our society has been doing that the last several decades. On top of that, mental-health funding in Sacramento County has been unconscionably slashed during these, our economically-troubled, times. Also, the homeless-help industry in our city pays greatly inadequate attention to those in the homeless population who suffer the most, the mentally ill.

When our economy was first beginning to falter, Volunteers of America dumped its mental-illness outreach program. Great shame on VOA.

And Loaves & Fishes doesn't train its Green Hats [staff in Friendship Park] on how to identify, deal with nor help denizens of the park who manifest behavior that suggests mental illness.

I do appreciate, from what I glean from the Bee story, that an attempt was made by an L&F mental-health program to give Kevin help.

It is easy in retrospect to write this, which is true:  Kevin's needs were greater than what the L&F program is crafted to provide.

More than a fourth of the Sacramento County homeless population is mentally ill, according to the most recent Street Count.  I submit that if the Bee reporters who wrote today's story had dug a little deeper (and had been fully conscientious), their story would have been a lot different.  I hope a proper follow-up story is forthcoming.

UPDATE 2/16/10:  I was hearing some talk that the police report shows that all Kevin is accused of doing is shoving a woman in a couselling center at Loaves & Fishes.  Today, I looked at court records which can be sought here:  saccourt.ca.gov .  Kevin has now been arraigned and charged with PC 220; PC 243.4; and PC 236, in the California Penal Code, which are, respectively, "Assualt with intent to commit mayhem, rape, sodomy ... etc."; sexual battery; and false imprisonment.  Very serious charges for very bad actions that are alleged.