How integrated is Sacramento?

One thing, at or near the top of the list, of the many things we Sacramento lovers love about our city, and the metropolis it hubs, is the diversity of the population.  And we love how well we all get along with each other — that is, if you ignore the politicos and a diversity of problems.

Famously, the city of Sacramento was a featured story in a 2002 issue of Time magazine with this spiffy title: "Sacramento: Where Everyone's a Minority."  But, certainly, things were not then and are not now unmitigatedly perfect. Per always, there's some ugliness and rivalries and claims (relating to realities) of institutional racism here and there.

The Sept. 2, 2002, article told us, "… while Sacramento approaches an ideal for integration, it certainly isn't paradise. Beneath the multicolored surface, the city's 407,018 inhabitants vacillate between racial harmony and ethnic tension."

New news, but from an older source, is a map of Sacramento's diversity.  It's based on the 2000 census, but it does show — as compared to maps of other metropolises — that Sacramentans of different ethnicities are mixed in together.  Red dots stand for 25 white people; blue dots stand for 25 black people; green dots for 25 people of other ethnicities.

You can click on the map posted here, and switch to higher or lower resolution.

The maps of Sacramento and 39 other major American metropolitan areas were made by a fellow named Eric Fischer.  They are posted to an article about it all in the current issue of Utne magazine.

Odds and Ends from this week's SN&R

Cover of the 9/30/10 SN&R

Three items in the current Sacramento News & Review got my attention.

One is a Letter to the Editor from Thomas E. Nicolette of Sacramento, writing about homelessness, that says something that is painfully true, but not so certainly and absolutely true as comes off in the way he expresses it.

Nicolette writes,

I live out here in Arden Arcade, and I give to the homeless out here near Howe and El Camino [avenues]. These guys, in their 40s and 50s, will never work again. There is not enough work for even able-bodied 20-year-old kids anymore in the casual labor market.

Let’s be honest here. Nobody wants to hire these guys, period. They are worse off than the Hindu “untouchable” caste. Therefore, since they have been tossed unto the trash heap of humanity, let us not pretend and continue to hold the long-since proven invalid supposition that they could go out and get a job if they wanted to.

Take out the harshness in what Nicolette writes, the universal certainty and the tang of invective, and you have to acknowledge the man is on to something.

By all accounts, we are in for a decade of high unemployment. We homeless guys who are nearer to our deaths than to our births are suffering the worst of the recession now, and we are going to continue to have a doozie of a hard time finding any job, much less good ones.

Because the job market is changing ever faster and ever more radically, younger employees, trained for the culture and equipment of the current employment scene will be increasingly valued, while we will be looked at as has-beens, past our expiration date.
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The second item of interest is news that the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace will be visiting Sacramento for two weeks beginning on October 3.

So, if y'all have nothing to do for the nine straight days when Fiendship Park is going to be closed, come refresh your spirit in the presense of the 11-foot-tall Jade Buddha, skillfully carved from a single piece of gem-quality jade.

The Buddha will be on display at the Kim Quang Temple at 3119 Alta Arden Expressway. [map] [link to Jade Buddha tour website] [A press release from the Vietnamese Buddhist Community in Northern California relating to the Sacramento arrival of the Buddha statue.]



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And lastly but not leastly, the final article in the weekly is an interview with Fiber Girl, Bronwyn Schweigerdt, a Sacramento teacher, author and speaker who preaches the good news of healthful eating.

Her 2002 book The Undiet was a big seller, teaching people how to eat well and make their body physically healthier as a result.  Free to Eat: The Proven Recipe for Permanent Weight Loss is her new book, which, as the title indicates, focuses on weight loss.

Boy, would I like for Ms. Schweigerdt to visit Homeless World Sacramento and do some super-heroine stuff for us, many of whom have been fattened and undernourished by the unhealthful diet of the homeless, which is fully Dickensian.

Oliver, tremblingly comes forward, tray in hand, and makes his famous request: "Please, Sister, I want a veggie."

Here, one Q&A from the interview:

Q. Why did you go to school for nutrition?
A.  Well, I believe I started studying nutrition because I wanted to save the world. I saw so many people getting diseases like heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes at such young ages, and knowing that it’s absolutely preventable—and absolutely reversible, even—it just really motivated me to study nutrition and to help people.

Hooray, you, Bronwyn!

Email from Norm Fadness, L&F Board VP, but not representing board, re homeless paying for their upkeep

I thought I would post on this blog an email I received last May from Norm Fadness, who identified himself as Loaves & Fishes' "Board Vice President," and CC'ed the whole of the board, but then wrote "Disclaimer: This comment does not represent an official position of Loaves & Fishes."

Seems pretty feckless on Norm's part, if you asked me.

Following is Norm's email and my response.

  fromNormand Fadness

toTom Armstrong email

ccRudy Ahumada ,
Libby Fernandez ,
Kelly Tanalepy ,
Kathleen Kelly ,
Karen Banker ,
Jim Peth ,
Gerrie Baskerville ,
"Dorothy R. Smith" ,
Don Fado ,
David Moss ,
Chris & Dan Delany ,
Bob Pinkerton

dateTue, May 25, 2010 at 7:46 AM

subjectToday's Bee article

mailed-byfrontiernet.net

Greetings Tom

I was just wondering if when you are not spending time bashing Loaves & Fishes in your "blog" if you signed up for work at the Food Bank to help pay for your upkeep?

Norm Fadness
Board Vice-President

Disclaimer: This comment does not represent an official position of Loaves & Fishes.
Reply
Tom Armstrong to Normand, Rudy, Libby, Kelly, Kathleen, Karen, Jim, Gerrie, Dorothy, Don, David, Chris, Bob

show details May 25

Normand,

I learned this morning that Foodlink [not Food Bank] had 'lost' eight of its employees that Jim Peth gathered for Allen at Foodlink to work for that charitable organization.

This was an almost-unique situation where jobs were not being funnelled to SafeGround people. Indeed Allen did an end-around (as I understand it), going to Jim rather than through top administration, to get hard workers. It was also more-that-nice that employees weren't being selected for ideological reasons.

I am a hard worker and would be delighted to work for Foodlink. But if I did so, I would not be making donations to Loaves & Fishes. Until Loaves & Fishes properly represents itself, including its political activities, to donors, I don't believe donors to the charity understand what they are contributing to.

Loaves & Fishes refuses to give up its national revolution activities, I'll call it -- synonymous with the Safe Ground Movement -- which I believe would be repulsive to the great majority of donors, if they knew about it.

As you may not know, Normand, I had been volunteering for Wash House. Right now, they have a surfeit of volunteers. Also, I volunteer to work in the kitchen at Union Gospel Mission much more often than I am required to.

But I am very much in favor of homeless people organizing themselves, through the mayor's Volunteer Tsar, such that we can do more to contribute to our upkeep, as you call it.

BTW, Normand, a great many of the Christians in the homeless-help industry provide for the poor for Biblical reasons, relating to good works they are motivated to do because of their faith. They are not looking to the poor for upkeep payback.

— Tom Armstrong

Fadness, nor anyone else, responded, either officially or unofficially, to my email.

The county and city mustn't shirk their responsiblities to homeless citizens

It is crucial that Sacramento County and the city of Sacramento not abandon their responsibility to look out for homeless people in our metropolis.

A Bee board editorial, "New partnership needed for homeless," published on Sept 15, has everything backwards. It is written in support of an effort, by the county and city, to create a “new countywide or regional joint powers authority/public-private partnership” to handle and coordinate the critical task of aiding homeless people and saving them from suffering and harm.

Such a concocted powerful agency will directly deny homeless people government oversight to protect their interests.

Such an agency, composed in significant part by executives from Christian nonprofits to beg for money and aid from Christian church groups, is an affront to what is a cornerstone of our republic: the separation of church and state. Homeless people are citizens and have a right to secular government oversight. An effort to create an authority as foreseen by the Bee board should be opposed on Constitutional grounds.

Besides: Christian-church people are not a backstop to fill in when a government group chooses to shirk one of its highest responsibilities to, instead, satisfy the wants of more-affluent citizens who have the ear of the politicos and contribute to their campaign warchests.

Christian churches, themselves, have been badly affected by the bad economy.  An article in the New York Times, today, titled "Congregations Reeling From Decline in Donations," tells us "across the congregational landscape of America. From storefront chapels to Sun Belt megachurches to suburban synagogues, across denominational lines, religious institutions are reeling from a decline in donations."  Surely, nowhere are matters worse than in our struggling county, that has particularly high unemployment and where state workers are being furloughed.

The state, the county and city have made wrong decisions that don't give the most import issues highest priority.  Helping the poor and homeless should be at or near the top of any priority list, not something that can be abandoned.

Many of the homeless-service nonprofits have expanded their empires in recent years while the regional governments and citizens have suffered in our bad economy. Some homeless-service nonprofits focus on themselves, exclusively, providing terrible, stinting service to homeless people.

Please. Let us not put the jackels in charge.  Let us maintain direct oversight from the county of homeless services it funds (and let us see services being funded!)  And let there be direct interest in homeless matters coming from the city, with funds forthcoming in difficult times.

[This is a slightly altered and augmented copy of a piece I submitted to the Bee a week ago that, by their non-response response, I have learned they chose not to use.]

Aftershock: Robert Reich's assessment of the problem and fix for our economic woes

The Panic of 1893 Redux (that follows the Gilded Age of Bush, Jr.) that we're in is the fundamental, structural economic problem in America. We need to move more of the prosperity that comes from our economy (which is highly efficient in boom times) to the middle class and poor, and away from the obscenely-rich rich.

The economy, today, OR flapping around like a landed, dying fish

Two liberal economists whom I trust when they write about the national economy are Robert Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor and now a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley; and Paul Krugman, longtime columnist with the New York Times and 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Reich has a recent post in his blog with the lengthy, very descriptive title "Why No Amount of Fiscal or Monetary Stimulus Will Be Enough, Given How Small A Share of Total Income the Middle Now Receives" where he tells us what can’t happen and needs to happen to give the American economy some much-needed OOMPH.

The Fed interest rate is near zero, so there’s both little room to lower it more, AND there’s no purposeful reason to lower it since businesses have money already they aren’t spending (and, thus, aren't looking for loans). [Consumers aren’t buying much, so there’s not an incentive for businesses to spend money by expanding.]

The problem we have is consumption. And citizen consumers aren’t motivated to spend in these flat-as-a-pancake economic times.

Also, citizens are uncomfortable spending money since, generally, they already owe so very much.

Writes Reich,

After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top, the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going. It can’t send more spouses into paid work, can’t work more hours, can’t borrow any more. All the coping mechanisms are exhausted.

And, putting a cattle prod to China — to make that nation up the value of its currency, for one thing — won’t help because, well, China is simply intransigent, and any fix from China would be snail-slow developing, any how.

The answer to the fix we’re in, Reich tells us is …

… reorganizing the economy to make sure the vast middle class has a larger share of its benefits. Remaking the basic bargain: linking pay to per-capita productivity.

In other words, promise of more money to the middle class will spur citizen consumers to feel better about their lives, be more confident, and begin to spend, again. All of which will cascade into greater and greater feelings of confidence and happiness and all will be well.

A recent column by Krugman, "1938 in 2010," compares the economic situation that Obama has to figure out how to deal with to where Franklin Roosevelt was in 1938.

Roosevelt’s policies to save the nation from the Great Depression were too cautious two years into his first term as president, just as Obama’s initial policies to save America from the Great Recession were too cautious.

The policy of each president hadn’t accomplished enough and Roosevelt was publicly unpopular because of economic stagnation, just as Obama is, today.

Each president found himself in “a political trap”: More stimulation (or stimulus, in Obama's case) was desperately needed, “but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery discredited government action to create jobs.”

So, what did FDR do? Nothing really; that is, he made no economic move. What happened was World War II, and with all the immense spending that came with that, the economy began to purr like a kitten, albeit during a time when massive amounts of  kill-and-be-killed was happening.

Obviously, the last thing America needs now is more war. But what?

Krugman concludes his column thus:

I had hoped that we would do better this time. But it turns out that politicians and economists alike have spent decades unlearning the lessons of the 1930s, and are determined to repeat all the old mistakes. And it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.

But always remember: this slump can be cured. All it will take is a little bit of intellectual clarity, and a lot of political will. Here’s hoping we find those virtues in the not too distant future.

Krugman's optimism is nice, but the country sure doesn't seem to be moving in a direction of "intellectual clarity." It's hard for me to be hopeful.

I think both Reich and Krugman are right, I just don't see that which they righty see as what needs to be done getting done.

Sacramento homeless and the risks of Day Labor, Part I

The entrance to Loaves & Fishes' Friendship Park as seen from the north side of the North C St. cul-de-sac that abutts 12th Street.

As I’ve written frequently previously, contrary to the stereotype, a great great many homeless people are scrappy. They are not work avoidant; they are work (and pay!) accepting and seeking.

This optimism that ‘something can be made to happen,’ to break the waves of despondency, is what is most admirable (and constantly refreshing!) about those struggling in Homeless World Sacramento. It’s sparkling hope in a tightly bounded universe that too much tries to crush hope.

The lure of ‘escape’ from the circumstance of homelessness, for this very big subset of Sacramento homeless people, is to find meaning and happiness that isn’t available ‘out here.’¹ The effort to find a more-normal life begins by sparking opportunities to make things different than just spinning around the turnstile of always just subsisting (and for many, doing the usual drinking or drugs) in Homeless World.

Thus, the energy and optimism that comes from seeking and offering themselves for work (or whatever involves engaging oneself in a productive task, though, for those of us with no retirement or disability income, getting PAID to do something is best. That is, we need some money.) is a break in the waves.

For a long time, you could see, from the Downtown-bound Blue Line [coming from Watt-I80] of the Light Rail, a sign over the entrance of Friendship Park, advertising Day Labor at Loaves & Fishes. The program, called “Daily Bread,” still up at the L&F website -- on this webpage, http://sacloaves.org/programs, it reads “Daily Bread Day Labor: A day labor referral service. Participants work in a wide range of jobs including yard work, construction, and moving. (916-832-5510)” -- was one way many homeless guys got temporary jobs.

The sign is down that was over Friendship Park. I’ve been told that a circumstance developed such that the Powers That Be at Loaves & Fishes got skittish about their legal liability [something I’ll get to in Part II of this series], such that the sign was pulled down, but the program was not entirely ended.

But there are risks (in addition to opportunities) to be found for homeless people jonesing for quick work and pay. While people from the general public are out there to help the homeless by using homeless labor in a mutually beneficial way, others prey on the homeless. And no one intercedes when bad things happen to good (homeless) people.

Forgive those who trespass against us

The way that that Daily Bread worked in Friendship Park, when it was fully active up until about six months ago, was this: At about 7:30am, homeless guys [and a rare gal] would begin lining up at a chosen spot, not far from the Information kiosk. A Green Hat [that is, a Park employee] would have the guys in the line draw a number out of a hat, which would, supposedly, determine the order that the guys would be chosen for any job-calls that came in. [So far as I can determine from all the fellows I’ve spoken to about this, all the jobs we are talking about here are under-the-table, and often, if not usually, pay less than minimum wage. Rare fully-legitimate jobs for homeless people, with Foodlink being the prominent employment example, went through other Loaves & Fishes’ sources, outside Daily Bread, to get homeless employees.]

When job calls came in, the caller would sometimes request certain homeless people [good workers he knew, e.g.] for the job task he had. Oftentimes, a requested person would not be someone on the ‘list’ that was created, nonetheless, the Green Hat would try to find [usually using the Park intercom] the requested homeless person if he was in the Park, somewhere.

Other times, it was widely believed, if a good job was called in to Park personnel, a Green Hat who was most centrally involved with Daily Bread Day Labor would funnel the job to homeless people he was friendly with. Indeed, it is widely believed that the number-draw list was pretty much always disregarded when good jobs (that paid well or were easy) came in, which were funneled to one particular Green Hat’s pals. Let me be clear that I believe the process of giving homeless guys day-jobs was corrupted: Not only were the jobs known to be under-the-table and, many, paying less than minimum wage, instances where homeless people were cheated were not followed-up on and the system of fair opportunity to get a day job was a sham. Basically, Loaves & Fishes affixed its Imprimatur to Daily Bread and, in its usual fully-careless way, let things fester and stink.

Jobs that came in that came from callers who were known to have serious problems, or who weren’t going to pay much, or had jobs that involved particularly difficult physical work, were given to homeless men who didn’t have an “in” with the Green Hats.

Like a frog in water. Such are the daze or our lives.

In Part 2 of this series, I will write up what I’ve been told of one-day- and short-term- jobs homeless people got from Daily Bread; from citizens approaching homeless people, usually from their cars; and some other off-the-radar regular sources. Some of the jobs are great; others barbaric.

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footnotes
1 NOT that being homeless is constant anguish. It’s very much not, for most of us. It’s more of a slow death by nicks and a slow accumulation of shame, something one can get all-too-acclimated with, and then wake up one day and find that you’re withering away, past saving. It’s like the ‘frog in a beaker of water’ story: Put a frog in a pot of cold water, and slowly bring the water to a boil. The frog, though capable of hopping right out, is only slowly discomfited. It stays put and proceeds to boil to death.

Top Thirteen List: Features of a McDonald’s restaurant run by the CEO of Loaves & Fishes

13. The restaurant is dwarfed by its new $1,700,000 warehouse next door where food is stored.

12. To place an order for food, you first have to wait in a series of three lines.

11. There’s no place to wash your hands on weekends. But, then, often on weekends, this McDonald’s just passes you a sack lunch: a coldcut sandwich in a bag of salt.

10. Of course we serve vegetables: Ketchup! And if you want another vegetable, we’ll give you a second packet.

9. The restaurant closes for nine days twice a year to change signage in the windows.

8. Ice for your drinks is in a big refrigerated tub. Feel free to reach right in and grab a few cubes!  Use your shirt or skirt and take dozens of cubes!

7. Sign over soft drink machine: “The management is not responsible if the soft drink dispenser cheats you out of your money, chump. Bwaaaa-ha-ha! BWAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

6. Hot dogs have replaced hamburger patties. We serve you what we got; eat it or starve, ya bum.

5. The Restaurant Eaters Advocacy position is funded with a grant from the Crock Foundation. [When writing the grant request, the manager didn’t realize that it’s the Kroc Foundation, not the Crock Foundation, that’s associated with McDonald's.]

4. The apple pies are kept outside until they have that extra-crispy crust that comes with staleness. But to make sure everybody’s happy, with any pastry comes a free whole stale chocolate cake. Eat up, everybody! Your diabetes ain’t our responsibilty! We’re only too happy to Supersize you!

3. The Big M symbol [aka, the Golden Arches] keeps falling over, almost crushing people.

2. To save her time and energy and to avoid accuracy, the manager makes up the restaurant statistics on the fly!

AND THE NUMBER ONE FEATURE OF A MCDONALD'S RUN BY THE CEO OF LOAVES & FISHES IS …

1. Overseers of the restaurant have locked themselves in the cold-storage room after replacing their blood with honey mustard.

Liberalism defined

This is from Timothy Ferris's new book The Science of Liberty:

Liberalism is inherently nonpartisan: It means freedom for all, or it means nothing at all. It maintains that everyone benefits from everyone’s freedom, and that all are diminished whenever one individual or group is not free. This precept can contort liberals into the uncomfortable posture known as tolerance. Some think that tolerance means treating all opinions as equally deserving of respect, but the point of liberalism is not that all views are equally valid. It is that society has no reliable way to evaluate opinions other than to let everybody freely express and criticize them — and, if they can garner sufficient support, to try them out.

It was difficult even for the founders of liberalism to fully embrace tolerance. John Locke would have denied equal rights to atheists: “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God.” he declared, in his A Letter Concerning Toleration, since the “promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon the atheist.” Many otherwise liberal thinkers today recoil from the prospect of granting homosexual couples the same legal benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy, or affording legal rights of due process to those accused of terrorism. Such concerns — essentially the nagging worry that something terrible will happen if too much freedom is extended to people who do not closely resemble ourselves — have so far prevented societies from becoming entirely liberal. But each step taken to extend equal rights to those previously denied them has in retrospect been seen to benefit not only the group in question but the society as a whole.

As an empirical, experimental philosophy that accommodates error and uncertainty, liberalism rejects all absolutist political claims, including absolute faith in religion at one extreme and in rationalism at the other. Liberalism does not oppose religion — it is a staunch defender of religious freedom — but it demands that the state grant special status to no religion; as Machiavelli observed, religion plus politics equals extremism. Rationalists are apt to imagine that they can reason their way to a political scheme so self-evidently superior that its implementation justifies at least a temporary suppression of opposing views; liberals will make no such concessions, because they appreciate that nobody is prescient enough to justifiably sacrifice present liberties for imagined future gains. That is the sense of Judge Learned Hand’s suggestion that Oliver Cromwell’s injunction, “I beseech ye, in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken,” be inscribed over the door of every church, school, and courthouse in the nation.

The ideal of liberalism is universal peace and mutual aid. “The starting point of liberal thought is the recognition of the value and importance of human cooperation,” wrote the economist Ludwig von Mises, “and the whole policy and program of liberalism is designed to serve the purpose of maintaining the existing state of mutual cooperation among the members of the human race and of extending it still further.... Liberal thinking always has the whole of humanity in view and not just parts.” Liberals are opposed to war not only for the usual reasons but also because wars tend to aggrandize governments, ballooning their budgets and emboldening them to draft conscripts. Similarly, liberalism opposes imperialism, colonialism, racism, and every other form of oppression.

The Ferris diagram.  Liberal is not the opposite of Conservative, it's the opposite of Totalitarian.  See Timothy Ferris's post to his Huffington Post blog/column:  "Conservative is not opposite Liberal."

The terms Liberal and Progressive are often treated as synonyms in America, when really there are clear distinctions.

I consider myself to be Liberal, while many of my views are Progressive and some are somewhat Conservative.

I certainly believe in Universal Healthcare, a construct that stems from a Progressive worldview.

I am troubled by budget deficits, something which long, long ago was a cornerstone of Conservative [from the root idea "conserve"] belief. Of course, today's Conservatives seem wholly to believe in shovelling money into rich people's hands at the expense of the poor and worker class. Sheesh. I'm also troubled by abortion policy in America, but I have sympathies for (and problems with) both the "Pro Life" [Conservative] and "Pro Choice" [Progressive] points of view, which are more different than opposite (though they manifest in Court decisions or legislation that is opposite).

The political philosophy stemming from Loaves & Fishes, its offspring, SafeGround (and SHOC, Sacramento Housing Alliance, and Francis House), is Progressive Totalitarianism, which is really old-style Communism with a Catholic Workers' Union kicker. [It is, as Ferris quoting Machiavelli says, "religion plus politics equals extremism."] L&F is weird:  It claims to represent homeless people, when it truly, overtly oppresses and controls homeless people - with the exception of those most in need, which it ignores, leaving them to rot on the street.  I find the Catholic Workers/League of Revolutionaries for a New America ideas embraced by L&F to be ghastly and repugnant. [An end to capitalism; guaranteed jobs for all; the ceasation of advances in technology] If the Loaves & Fishes knuckleheads got their way, America would spiral into ruin. The whole country would be like Stalinist Russia or like the Loaves & Fishes compound. [Tremble.]

The Prodigal Son and Stages of Faith

Great doubt: Great enlightenment
Little doubt: Little enlightenment
No doubt: No enlightenment
  — Zen Maxim

From the stained-glass window of a church in Charleston, South Carolina: The father greets his younger son upon his return home.

The Book of Luke, chapter 15, with its three parables, concluding with the Parable of The Prodigal Son, is surely the most preached-about chapter in the Bible at the Union Gospel Mission.

This is understandable since the prodigal son in the story easily serves as a representation of the typical congregant at the mission: someone who has left, or lost, his life to a period of waste and self indulgence.

In the middle of the story, the son reaches his nadir. All the money has been spent and he is left in a terrible job and is destitute. He has an epiphany: I can go back to my father, not as his son (since I am shamed and sinful), but as one of his humble servants.¹

The story concludes with the son returning home, his father being overjoyed, and a great party in celebration of the return being thrown. What more clarion message could there be that God wants the lost, the sinner, to repent and be saved?

Stages of Faith relating to the Mission

The effort by the evening preachers at the mission, whether they are directly aware of it or not, is to gain commitment from congregants to have a synthetic/conventional faith.

Synthetic/Conventional Faith is Stage Three in James Fowler's system recognizing stops along the path of faith. It is described, in part, thus, at the Integral+Life website:

One of the hallmarks of this stage is that it tends to compose its images of God as extensions of interpersonal relationships. God is often experienced as Friend, Companion, and Personal Reality, in relationship to which I'm known deeply and valued. I think the true religious hunger of adolescence is to have a God who knows me and values me deeply, and can be a kind of guarantor of my identity and worth in a world where I'm struggling to find who I can be.

Don’t read too much meaning in the mention of adolescents in the paragraph above. Conventional Faith can be achieved by teenagers, but is also the depth of faith experienced by, perhaps, the majority of adults.

I have often written that I am frustrated that our love of God and others is much less discussed than God or Jesus’s love of us by preachers coming to the mission to speak to the “guests.” I now understand this overwhelming focus on ‘us being loved’ as a function of establishing conventional, basic faith in the hearts of the congregants.

In a way, like adolescents but different, the addicted men who come to the mission are struggling to find out who they can be.

I don’t know much about what goes on with the guys who enter the mission’s Rehab program, but I believe it serves to move men from foundational Conventional faith to Stage Four, Individuative-Reflective Faith.

Stage Four is described, in part, thus at the Integral+Life website:

Stage Four … is a time in which the person is pushed out of, or steps out of, the circle of interpersonal relationships that have sustained his life to that point. Now comes the burden of reflecting upon the self as separate from the groups and the shared world that defines one's life

Stage Four is concerned about boundaries: where I stop and you begin; where the group that I can belong to with conviction and authenticity ends and other groups begin. It's very much concerned about authenticity and a fit between the self I feel myself to be in a group and the ideological commitments that I'm attached to.

In the Rehad program, the guys are encouraged to fully leave their former lives — of being angry or being addicted to substances, gambling or sex or being lawbreakers — and the people they associated with in that former life, to become wholesome Christians who are authentic and joyous in a new, profoundly-different life.

Stage of Faith relating to Dean Baker's message at Trinity Cathedral

Dean Brian Baker of Trinity Cathedral Episcopal Church talked about Luke 15's Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son parables earlier this month.

In the viddy, below, he tells us, early on,

The problem with Jesus' parables, is that they're like these subversive brain teasers.  The more you read them, and the more you ponder them, they begin to change the way you look at the world.  And they might mean something, after deeper reflection, that's completely opposite than what you initially thought. And that's what happened with me with these parables.

Lost, Sermon 9/12/10 from Trinity Cathedral on Vimeo.

I submit that a summery of Dean Baker's deeper understanding of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is not a substitute for listening to the video, but here's mine:

God doesn't care about those who suppose themselves righteous.  Thus, people/Christians must recognize their brokenness, their lostness.  God is in the business of healing the lost, and they are all of us. [Excepting, perhaps, an enlightened/saintly few?]

I believe that Dean Baker is preaching in the mode of Stage Five of Faith, Conjunctive Faith, described, in part, at the Integral+Life webspace thus:

There is a deepened readiness for a relationship to God that includes God's mystery and unavailability and strangeness as well as God's closeness and clarity.

Stage Five is a time when a person is also ready to look deeply into the social unconscious—those myths and taboos and standards that we took in with our mother's milk and that powerfully shape our behavior and responses. We really do examine those, which means we're ready for a new kind of intimacy with persons and groups that are different from ourselves. We are ready for allegiances beyond our tribal gods and our tribal taboos. Stage Five is a period when one is alive to paradox. One understands that truth has many dimensions which have to be held together in paradoxical tension.”

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¹ In his book, 'Narcissism: a new theory,' Neville Symington writes:

Despairing of illusory images and solutions.

It is necessary to note some of the logical consequences of the reversal of narcissism. What leads to psychic change is inner psychic action. Interpretation does not bring about change. Interpretation may either encourage the individual towards the moment of psychic action, or it may be the product of psychic action that has already occurred. It is extremely important to realize this. The inner psychic action is made by the person alone, in their freedom.

What sorts of conditions favour inner psychic action? in the example of the recovered alcoholic [a story, from his psychiatry practice Symington wrote about several times], it was crucial that he had reached rock-bottom. He had been thrown out of this home and out of the hospital ward, and he was sitting on a bench in the pouring rain. In that situation of near despair the lifegiver, which had been repudiated but never entirely killed off, became unsmothered. If a would-be philanthropist had come up and tried to soothe him as he was sitting on the bench, the moment would have been wrecked.

As you can see, Symington’s alcoholic is very similar to the prodigal son, fitting the biblical scenario to a tee.  But that is not intentional; Symington is an atheist.  But, the parallel is there for indeed, the prodigal son had been narcissistic. Interpretation [that is, understanding his situation] had not brought about change for the prodigal son; it was psychic action [being renewed, reborn] in freedom [from his own Free Will]. The lifegiver [the father, the saviour] was “unsmothered,” or un-repressed.

Applications for Social Security disability checks soar

An article in the Washington Post [picked up in the hardcopy edition of the Bee, today, in an abreviated form] tells us that Social Security disability applications soared, according to the latest data, comparing 2009 to 2008.

As readers of this blog know [and anyone dependent on the Bee or SN&R or any other major Sacramento news source wouldn't know], disability checks are a huge source of income in Homeless World Sacramento with perhaps half the homeless population getting first-of-the-month checks.

Disability checks 'out here' are often called "happy checks" since they fund considerable use of mind-altering substances - including alcohol, metamphetamine, crack cocaine and marijuana.  The number of people who use services at Loaves & Fishes' mall of homeless services plummets on the first days of every month after "happy checks" have been received.  The population of people in the cul-de-sac at Loaves & Fishes, waiting to get in to Friendship Park, will drop by half or more comparing a day at the end of month to one at the beginning of the next month.  Likewise, at Union Gospel Mission, a situation where men are oversubscribed for the facility's guest dorm will immediate change such that there are empty beds as a new month begins.

As Central Sacramento homeless citizens are likely to know, the Delany Center at the Loaves & Fishes Homeless Mall is where homeless people go in order to learn the ins and outs of applying for SSDI, which pays a minimum of $840/mo [I believe it is] to a homeless person approved for disability.  [Be aware that many solo men get much more than $840/mo.  I understand that one homeless man receives over $1300/mo.]

Homeless people know, from lawyers, that there are disabilities that cannot be confirmed by doctors.  A patient's reported experience of pain cannot be objectively confirmed.  A person's behavior can be misreported or faked during a doctor's interview, "justifying" a bi-polar or depression disability claim.

It is known in Homeless World that an attorney that Delany Center was using to help get homeless people disability approval was repremanded in recent months for being overly aggressive at instructing homeless people how to get approval for Social Security disability benefits.

The Washington Post story tells us that "Applications to the program soared by 21 percent, from 2008 to 2009 as the economy was seriously faltering." And that "about half of all applicants eventually make it onto the disability rolls …"

We are also told,

Between 1984 and 2004, the percentage of male high school dropouts between ages 40 and 54 on the federal disability program rose from 5.4 to 7.8 percent. Those former workers were twice as likely as male high school graduates and five times as likely as male college graduates to receive disability benefits

It should be noted, which the article fails to report, that high-school dropouts are likely to have physical-work intensive jobs which can make getting a disability more likely and can mean that any disability a man might get will more likely disqualify the man for employment in his field, than would be the case for a better-educated man.

Thus, a higher disability rate for middle-aged men who are high-school dropouts is understandable. If the news that same-age college graduates have one-fifth the likelihood to be on disability makes sense, I don't know.

Also, the article tells us,

The benefits are modest. But so is the median wage for high school dropouts, which is $440 per week, according to the Labor Department. The median wage for all workers, meanwhile, is $740 per week.

As a result, economists say, many low-wage workers who struggle with health problems have fewer incentives to remain attached to the labor force.

"The current SSDI system sends a negative message to disabled Americans that they are not valued members of the labor force by making it impossible for them to draw any benefits and work, even part-time," said Michael Greenstone, director of Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, which is helping to develop possible reforms for the program. "We need to change the incentives around SSDI to reward work."

But then, of course, there may be little incentive to change the incentives what with soft economy we are going to have for the next decade or more, with the unemployment rate staying above 7%, nationally.

What may need to happen, instead, is that the system of awarding disability benefits needs to be 'tightened.' By that I mean ways need to be found to "means test" those awarded benefits and to assure that those getting benefits are using the funds for life essentials, such as food and rent, and not to fund bad habits, like gambling, and addictions.

The example from Homeless World Sacramento shows that many many disability-check recipients effectively 'double dip,' getting SSDI checks that should be used for life essentials, but are. instead, used to fund addictions. THEN, they use publicly and privately funded homeless-help services for food and shelter and an array of other services. It's a crime without there being a law against it.

Understanding the dying secular person’s resistance to Christianity’s salvific message

At the mission, yesterday, the main speaker was an elderly man — whom I’ll call Mr. Jones — who told us he had worked, for many years, with a team from a major California hospital/insurance group that helped to maintain people who were in the last months of their lives.

His job was to provide Christian counselling to those nearing death: To comfort Christians at death’s door, and to save others from hell before they died.

The group would go to the homes of these fragile, deathly-ill people and try to help them to be physically comfortable as well as find spiritual comfort.

Mr. Jones told us about many instances when people would reject his effort to win them for Christ.

I was discomfited by the speakers’ consistent theme of what he said he confronted when he was met by people resistant to his message. It was clear to me that the man did not understand the typical worldview of folks who are not Christians or are lapsed in Christian-spiritual vigor.

The speaker told us sometimes people would say that they weren’t worried about their death, because, at worst, they would end up where all their friends were.

Or, they would fully reject Mr. Jones’s entreaties to tell them about Jesus. Mr. Jones found this to be strange and startling. Mr. Jones was, understandably, greatly disappointed not to be welcomed to have the opportunity — perhaps the last opportunity that there was — to save someone’s soul.

From my experience, the most typical worldviews of secular people

The main thing that I would want a devout Christian to understand is that most secular people do not spend time thinking about Christianity.

Many mission preachers seem to suppose that non-Christians do a lot of thinking about God and reject Him, for whatever reason. I think that that is very much not so. Secular people are into whatever they are doing in their lives. They are mostly oblivious to matters relating to belief. They live in a world where God almost never comes up as a topic. And, when they hear talk of God, they walk away.

Secular people don’t spend much time thinking about Christian people, but when they do they think that Christians have an enchanted worldview. They would never say it that way, but I believe that it what most secular people think.

Whereas secular people look at the world as splendid and beautiful and the result of ‘natural’ processes that can be understood from the vantage of science, they believe conservative Christians see a world of (false) interconnections and (false) supernatural interventions to make things happen.

Some secular people think that the way conservative Christians think is silly, but for the most part secular people don’t think about how believers think.

Secular people see the world as a place that doesn’t interfere with events. Both good and bad things happen to good people and to bad people. A lot of what occurs is fully random.

Typically, a secular person thinks, We may only affect the world and others by taking action, and not by prayer or appeals to supernatural powers.

When secular people reject efforts to change their worldview, to bring them to Christ, this occurs because secular people (1) know the Christian message of salvation, already, and (2) because secular people are comfortable in their worldview.

They also believe that if there is a God, He is about love and would not send them to roast in hell for all eternity.  There is something profoundly contradictory about a God of Love, who knows us thoroughly during our lifetime, saying to us, on Judgment Day, that since we didn't profess a belief in Christ, He didn't know us, and the punishment is the worst thing that can be imagined.  A typical intelligent secular person thinks that none of that makes sense.  They put what faith they have in God (if there is one) being better than that.  Many dying secular people believe they are appealing to a higher Higher Power by not appealing to the Christian God at all.

I stand outside all of this.  But what I have written here is my sense of the Secular Mindset of many.  And why they would brush aside the effort to discuss Salvation that Mr. Jones might try to initiate.

Bee submission

The Bee.

I've submitted an opinion piece to the Bee on a matter I consider to be of critical importance.  I don't want to tip off what its about since an unscrupulous nun tells me she "monitors" this blog.  [Big Sister is watching YOU!]

Will see if the Bee publishes what I wrote.  If not, I'll post what I wrote in this blog, of course.

UPDATE 9/24:  Based on the Bee's non-response response (in other words, they didn't write me back in a week's time, which is their way of telling folks who submit letters or opinion pieces that they won't or can't use the submission),  I did as promised and posted what I wrote in this here blog!  See "The county and city mustn't shirk their responsiblities to homeless citizens."

John Kraintz and the issue of homeless healthcare

John Kraintz

John Kraintz, Sacramento's locally famous homeless person, was in the news, yet again.  But this time, SafeGround isn't the topic, it's the man's health.

An inside story in this week's Sacramento News & Review, "State of emergency," tells us that Kraintz was diagnosed as having a ruptured softball-sized cancerous tumor, that resulted in surgery that removed his gallbladder and part of his pancreas and colon.  A regime of chemotherapy is in the offing for him.

It's a sad state of affairs, and I certainly root for John to beat back the cancer, and to feel healthy.

But I post this news for another reason, too:  I am a little bummed by matters of health care expense that come up in the article.

For starters, if anyone comes to be as ill as Kraintz, he is going to run up a very big hospital bill.  Kraintz's bill at Sutter General was $138,938 , we're told.

Was Kraintz's bill exeptionally high because he is homeless, and thus necessarily made negligent of getting check-ups or prompt care?  Probably.  The article suggests that's the case, without documenting it.  The subheading of the article is "Sacramento's homeless often rely on emergency rooms for their medical care.  It's an expensive and dangerous system."

But I would contend that the largest part of what makes homeless medical care seem especially expensive is how the accounting for medical costs in the healthcare field are determined.  Emergency-room costs are artificially accounted for in a way to make them high. This is so to make non-regular users of a hospital's services pay more than those who are members of the hospital's provider service.

It's just like what you see in any city:  Tourists are artificially targetted to pay more than citizens who live there.  Why?  Because tourists won't stick around to complain and can't influence things, easily, by using other services.  Tourists get stuck with hotel-room taxes, taxi taxes, air-flight taxes, and high and extra charges on just about all else.

Kraintz, you see, is effectively a "tourist" at Sutter General, so he gets stuck with a bill artificially made especially high.  And there's nothing to be done about it.

But, then, all medical services provided to uninsured indigents are artificially costed out such that they are higher that what others would pay.  This is so such that the special-case providers can better cover their expenses by billing the government for more for what they provide.

It's all accounting hocus-pocus.  It's understandable, and not quite chicanery, but, then again, it is chicanery.

Ulitimately, the cure for all the nonesense is Universal Healthcare, which is in the pipeline and will be put in place, eventually, if the Republicans and Tea Partiers don't block it.   Universal healthcare will allow homeless people to get regular check-ups that will forestall some expensive very serious medical ailments.  And it will help homeless people to just generally feel better such that they are better enabled to find their way out of their homeless circumstance.  With universal healthcare, accounting trickery won't be incentivized.

Plus, we will at last, after 220 years, be meeting the constitutional mandate "to promote the general Welfare."

Insults and connection at Union Gospel Mission

Three weeks ago, Union Gospel Mission’s star visiting preacher, Jimmy Roughton, said something, an aside from the thrust of what he came to say, that was very true, and relates to some discussions that have been going on lately.

I wasn’t taking notes, but the gist of what he said to the congregation was this:

I know you guys have a lot of preachers that come in here and lecture you or scold you about your rough life and rough ways and want you to feel bad about yourselves. But you guys know I love you, and I understand you, and I used to be out there myself, for ten years. During the lost 1980s, I was out there with you, so I know what it’s like. I’m here as an Encourager. I truly want the best for you.

There are many reasons Roughton is a highly effective preacher to the mission’s constantly shifting congregation, but the connection he makes and maintains every night he speaks is the heart of his success and popularity, even for those of us who aren’t the addicts which are, typically and understandably, the target audience he addresses.

In recent months, other preachers — those several who are the least skilled — have beaten up on the congregation in their various ways.

One visiting preacher repeatedly attacked the motives of the congregation for being it the seats in the first place. This is from my notes of snarky and uncool things he said:

“... this will be the best sleep you had all day” [After telling us he was going to address a difficult point of scripture.]

“You’re listening to me so that you can eat.” [Sure, the meal that follows the sermon is of interest. But, truly, the good majority of the guys are attentive to the speaker.]

“Some of you have strength in your jaws ‘cause you don’t stop talking.” [The preacher had lost his audience. Snide insults tend to do that to any group.]

“Forgive me I don’t want to say the same thing over and over.”

“One story real quick, I know you want to eat.”

“Some of you are here at the gospel mission, day in, day out.”

“Some of the people in this mission have heard this word over and over.”

Some preachers have the skills of the profession that is their calling; others, you have to wonder if they missed the call.

Some preachers make it very known that they blame homeless people for the circumstance they are in. Some preachers don’t have the foggiest idea what homelessness is about or what the experience is like. Other preachers — the good ones, the great ones, the amazing ones — for various reasons, seem very effective at communicating and touching hearts. And if their intention is to motivate reform among the addicts in the audience, they seem to find breakthroughs. And if their intention is to make an important point, they cut through clutter and fog and are clarifying.

Last night, Pastor Brett of Vacaville Bible Church was the preacher, after a two-month absence. His group is always fun and he's always well prepared, making the night Vacaville Bible Church comes to the mission ‘an event.’

Pastor Brett is wholly authentic at the podium, and joyous at the opportunity to speak before us. I think that last night he even told us that he was honored and happy to be preaching — but he doesn’t really have to say that, it all comes through in his enthusiasm and demeanor. Pastor Brett makes no claim to having keen knowledge of the life problems of those hearing him speak. His appeal is to what we all have in common.

Always, Pastor Brett comes with something important to say to us. [Last night, he talked about the message in James, chapter 4, regarding personal conflicts.] He engages the congregants such that his interest in his message, and how he relates to it, comes across, sparking our keen interest and thoughts about conflict in our relationships with others.

All the while, Pastor Brett is organized in what he has to say, lays in some appropriate, interesting (and often funny) personal anecdotes. And he’s a grown-up about it all. And he’s always positive and upbeat. Yet he’s humble. [Not Mother Teresa-equivalent humble, but egoless, anyway.]

Plus there are no jibes about anything, much less the common "you're just here for the food" quip. Which we're not (just there for the food, that is) when a group approaching Vacaville Bible Church’s all-around quality comes to the mission.

The wealthiest of the wealthy cannibalize the world

A cartoon from the time of the original Gilded Age showing monopolistic Robber Barons tormenting the 'workman.'

The second paragraph in Bob Hebert's column yesterday in the New York Times:

Americans are not being honest with themselves about the structural changes in the economy that have bestowed fabulous wealth on a tiny sliver at the top, while undermining the living standards of the middle class and absolutely crushing the poor. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a viable strategy for reversing this dreadful state of affairs. (There is no evidence the G.O.P. even wants to.)

Yep.  A central element of what's wrong in this country nowadays is that we are in a new Gilded Age.  Before the turn of the century, a hundred and ten-plus years ago, it was the original Gilded Age, a time when Robber Barons, like John Rockefeller, were on the loose and the structure of the economy was in many ways similar to today. Fairness was old hat. A very few were stinkingly rich and the rest struggled to get by.

A circumstance like that is ruinous for a nation.  Thankfully, eventually, Teddy Roosevelt rose to power and put in place many correctives.  Subsequently (after a bad four years with Taft as President), Woodrow Wilson became the Pres, and some more good things happened, interspersed with the awful First World War.

While I love President Obama, believing that he desires to do all the right things, he has proved to not have the drive, originality and chutzpah of Teddy Roosevelt, and thus he hasn't had quite enough success steering us out of the pickle the country's in.  And the political scene in Washington DC is nowhere near what it needs to be to straighten out the underlying problem, the overall disparities in income.

Hebert's column tells us this about America's income disparities:

… analysts … have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.

The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing just 13,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.

While I applaud Hebert's column, one matter Hebert doesn't get into is the problem of globalization that creates an international race to the bottom to court the stinking rich.  Every nation wants to retain and lure rich people who can fund job creation.  In the competition that undermines everybody, ultimately, the whole of the planet's economy gets corrupted.

This race to the bottom is truly Diabolical.  The only cure is, perhaps, a strict international agreement to prevent wholesale caving in to the interests of the obscenely wealthy.  But to make such an agreement work, it would probably require some kind of way-way-too-powerful International Government.  And then — yipes! — a world-ruling totalitarian freedom-disallowing dictatorship that we could never get rid of, short of the Second Coming of Jesus, could rather easily come to power.  Except for a very few, all of mankind would then become slaves.  And worse, without any freedom, we'd be slaves without knowing we were slaves.  It would be ultimate misery, squared. We'd be automatons living in an Orwellian dystopia.

Imperious leader of far-far-Leftist totalitarian group cracks down on critic

A recent Los Angeles Times article tells us that the Chinese government has cracked down on a man, Guo Degang, who is perhaps the country’s top comedian.

“After poking snide fun at officialdom,” the totalist administration with its imperious leader in the 9,596,961 sq km community where he lives decided to shut him down.

"He says things nobody else would dare to say,” said one Guo supporter. "[They were] looking for an excuse to teach him a lesson, to say, 'You should be [saying] flattering [things] instead of criticizing.'"

"It's not an ideological campaign," another critic of the administration said, in explanation of the crackdown. "It's about social order. It's about obedience. It's to remind people, 'I'm your boss.'"

The article tells us, “For years, [the comedian/critic] got more and more popular, and with the fame came … a certain measure of cachet among the country’s powerful.”

County seeks way to abandon its responsibilites to its neediest of citizens, us!

Homeless people trading cards.  Just paper; not people.

An article in the Sacramento Bee, today, leads with this news,

Sacramento County no longer wants to coordinate the area’s homeless programs and plans to turn over that task to a new organization to be made up of government and private stakeholders.

In other words, the county is shirking its responsibilities to the most needy of its citizens and turning things over to some new fandangled agency it'll create and toss a bunch of powers to. “YOU take over this hornets’ nest,” says the county. “We’re too busy with our more-glamorous chores.

“You can do what you want with the rabble, just as you have been. All the moola you reap is yours for empire building. Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out the back. Toodles!”

The most-popular comment at the Sac Bee website put things well. Here ‘tis:

In the meantime, it is pushing forward with a plan to form a nonprofit group or joint powers authority that would pursue government grants, raise money in the private sector and distribute millions of dollars to agencies that serve the homeless.” In other words: Create a bunch of little corrupt private agencies that feed off of the government to fund an enterprise that will be in their own best self-interest to NEVER FIX. Sounds like a wonderful plan (he says sarcastically). When will we ever learn? How many of these “do gooder” groups do we have out there raising money and receiving government funding to “eradicate this” and “put an end to that”? When you come up with a number here’s the next question: What have any of them actually fixed, solved or cured? Exactly.

For the county to hand over the power of life and death for a large group of people to the same old, same old stinking do-nothing do-gooder no-good homeless-services nonprofits is eerily similar to when, in the late 30s, Great Britain handed the Sudetenland over to the protoNazis. I think we all know how well that turned out. [Think WWII and six-million exterminated Jews.]

Supes:  The homeless citizens in Sacramento county are not elementary-school trading cards, or sacks of navy beans. You cannot merrily abandon your responsibilities, even when you have money you would prefer to spend elsewhere to satisfy richer, more-influential constituents (that is, everybody else in the county).

You have a job you are supposed to do, you knuckle-headed Sacramento County Supervisors. Taking care of the poorest — those most in need of the protection and aid that only you can provide — is not something you should discard, nor can you, morally. There will be hell to pay if y’all follow up on the Department of Human Assistance’s plan.

A rationale for the county to dodge its responsiblities here is the supposed success of “One Day to End Homelessness” which was a ploy to grab church-goers’ money to pay for something the county didn’t want to. [The county had other claims to its funds.  I understand.  But helping - saving, really - the indigent must be a top priority, a high claim.]

It is thought that by fully being rid of county [aka, secular] duties to its homeless citizens, the usual suspect of homeless-help agencies can make do with a robust effort to get even more out of the purses of rich liberals and church goers. And that THEY, the nonprofit agencies, with their bon ton friends, can do all the pesky grant seeking.

Allow me to point out to the public that the monster [in size and otherwise] homeless-help agency in Sacramento, Loaves & Fishes, has been adding greatly to its hoard of assets in recent years while the county and public (and especially the homeless) have suffered in today’s economy. L&F added $250,000 to its hoard in calendar year 2009. While Loaves & Fishes has a stated mission of providing shelter and taking care of the homeless, THEY ARE ALREADY SHIRKING THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES. Last winter was a very difficult season for non-SafeGround homeless people. [SafeGround wintered at Hawthorn Suites, thanks to the mayor.  It's no joke; see blogpost.] Loaves & Fishes should have been augustly sheltering more people, something they wouldn't do.  Instead of giving greater power to the bunch of Loaves & Fishes hoarding pikers, the County Supes should be investigating Loaves & Fishes! 

And do you know how much Volunteers of America's CEO is paid?  It's over $300,000 per year!

A huge, fully-dead, rootless tree almost killed homeless citizens in Loaves & Fishes’ Park earlier this year.* And now they are spending $2,000,000 on a warehouse, to hold what? already-stale pastries? donated things they hoard instead of distribute!?  Loaves & Fishes, for one, isn't so competent they should take on more responsibility, even if such was appropriate, and it's not.  Loaves & Fishes is the Three Stooges, only with a better, bouncier haircut for Moe.

Don't do it, County Supervisors.  Help the homeless, don't betray us or abandon us.  We're not all nice, clean, sweet-smelling people, we homeless, but we want to live and thrive and get our lives back, most of us.  Help!
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* Joan Burke, L&F's Advocacy Director was quoted in a Sac Bee article on Jan. 22, 2010:

"By the grace of god, the limb fell off first, piercing the roof of one of the gazebos," said Burke. "It was pouring rain, and people had to come out of the cover. There was quite a bit of grumbling, but not 10 minutes later, the whole tree went over, crushing several benches. So we are very thankful there was nobody there, because they truly would have been killed."

Time perspectives and the condition of homelessness

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo makes the case that a fundamental difference in people, individually and between cultures, is our orientation to time.

Life is full of temptations, Zimbardo tells us, and how we ‘handle’ temptation is a basic element relating to how we approach life. And the way we deal with matters in our life is conditioned on our perception of time.

Indeed, studies show that children who resist temptation and delay gratification grow up to be happier and more-successful people. Whereas those who impulsively satisfy their immediate desires, or people who re-live the past (because of glories or guilt they ruminate about) are less happy.

Zimbardo sets out six basic Time Perspectives:

    • Past - Focus on Positives
    • Past - Focus on Negatives
    • Present - Hedonism
    • Present - Fatalism
    • Future - Life-Goal Oriented
    • Future - Transcendental [thinking of life after death]

It is clear from how Zimbardo presents his case, that the majority of homeless people are Present oriented.

Succumbing to addictions and living for immediate pleasures is what the majority of the homeless population does. Indeed, this large segment of the homeless population does next-to-no planning, using up what money they receive very quickly. As is known within Homeless World Sacramento, a great many addicts receive disability checks [aka by many: “happy checks”], the funds from which buy fun and substances. The money, ostensibly given for people to ‘live on,’ gets used up by mid-month. Others within this group are addicted to gambling. Again, the money disappears quickly, and the addict returns to shelters or camping and dependence on charities and the county’s homeless services.

Optimal Temporal Mix PAST gives you ROOTS -- to be connected    to your identity and family. You are grounded. FUTURE gives you WINGS -- to soar to new    destinations and challenges. PRESENT gives you ENERGY -- to explore    people, places, self and sensuality.

The Union Gospel Mission’s approach to saving the vast majority (solo adult males) within this prime subgroup makes sense, psychologically. The effort is to change a lifestyle of immediate gratification to one of transcendental planning -- to move someone in a Present - Hedonistic orientation toward thinking of the Future and living for it. This serves to make a man’s future infinitely better [changing a future in Hell to one in Heaven], and gives his life meaning [making his relationships with others and the world, generally, positive, productive and mature].

The mission has many examples it can provide of lives that have been turned around 180°. But, of course, getting poor, suffering people to give up their addictions is extremely difficult and often the mission effort does not succeed.

While, generally, becoming more Future oriented is the optimal ‘way to be,’ Zimbardo instructs that having a mentally healthy “temporal mix” is what’s best. Someone whose eyes are wholly on the future is ungrounded, ‘not there for others’ and, damn it, never has any fun.

Speaking of fun, this first video is an easy viewing experience with Zimbardo telling us about time perception with helpful animation.



This second viddy is a lecture by Zimbardo that includes the words from the animation above. It lasts about 40 minutes.

"Rough justice" from plea bargaining called intolerable

"For pity is the virtue of the law,
And none but tyrants use it cruelly."

- Wm Shakespeare in "Timon of Athens"

This from the recent book Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court by Amy Bach:

… plea bargaining is the main vehicle for facilitating substantive justice.  Plea bargaining is justified on grounds of expediency.  It also tends to make judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys look good.  Unlike a trial, pleas, by and large, cannot be appealed: the defendant has in effect bargained away his rights.  Pleas also keep the conviction rates high because a prosecutor doesn't run the risk of losing in a trial.  And it keeps a defense attorney's workload manageable.

Albert W. Alschuler[, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law,] has made a comprehensive study of the problem of plea bargaining and coercion. "Once you get used to it," he said, "you don't even notice the injustice."  The cost is a metamorphosis of the system, in which power comes to reside in the one person who has the authority to approve a plea.  "I think you ought to use the word fascism," he said when asked about the conditions in American courts.  "Most people don't understand what rights and procedures are for.  They look to the bottom line: did we do rough justice in most cases?"  They don't realize that "the answer is usually going to be yes.  If you asked about justice in the former Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China or Saddam Hussein's Iraq the answer would also be yes.  If you make me a czar and you say I can do whatever I want … well, I am going to do rough justice in most cases.  But that is intolerable."  According to Alschuler, one solution is to get rid of plea bargaining altogether.  In its place, the system should reduce the "over-proceduralization" of full-blown jury trials with simpler trials which may, for example, be conducted by a judge alone.

Another leading scholar, John H. Langbein, a professor at Yale Law School, has decried plea bargaining as a form of a tortured, forced confession.  In an interview, Langbein argued that adversarial criminal procedure is unworkable as a system of mass justice.  In practice it comes down to "coercion," he said.  "And it is truth disserving."

Those who are especially apt to lose out on justice because of plea bargaining are indigent homeless folk, and especially so in hard economic times.

The system, including attorneys on both sides and the judges, will press for a deal to be struck, to forgo any long procedure and expensive trial process. The defendent is caught in the crosshairs, with everyone urging that he accept any proffered deal. Damn a real, honest effort at justice, full speed ahead!