26 Comments
Sep 26, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann

I too live in Portland, and I am totally with you on this one. I generally feel safe in my neighborhood and walk or jog every day. However, a few weeks ago, the street racers took over a major intersection a few blocks from my house. The noise was so loud, it sounded as though they were going to come through my window. It went on for well over an hour. Lots of loud fireworks and screeching tires. In and of itself, this incident was not life threatening. I understand that the police would need a very large crowd control contingent to shut it down and they didn't have the resources at the moment (there were shootings in other parts of town). As a former 9-1-1 dispatcher who had to prioritize police calls, I get it. However, I was scared and frustrated that no one responded. A neighbor was injured when he was punched in the face after trying to video the activity with his phone.

I got off NextDoor because of all the homeless bashing that went on. But I also don't think it's helpful to allow people with untreated mental illness and addiction problems to live on the street, so I support efforts to provide housing and shelter and treatment.

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Hoover may have been writing more about the widespread flouting of Prohibition laws and the related gang violence. So in parallel with that time one step in the right direction would be to end Nixon's grotesque "war on drugs" and decriminalize (if not legalize) soft ones like pot. I agree about the rising rates though; here in the Twin Cities there certainly are a lot of reports about catalytic converter thefts and home invasions. How much crime has increased versus how much is simply being better reported may be another question, but it certainly is not good.

Using fear to gain power is of course an old, old tactic that many dictatorships have used. And it works well in mass media--Fox (what I call the "Goebbels Network") seems built on it. It's especially effective when tied in with racism, like Bush's infamous Willie Horton ad. Trump has an instinctual feel for such hate, going back at least to his ads calling for execution of the Central Park Five. Crime rates may well oscillate down again, but there's no easy way out of this except time, education, and getting to know other groups. Combined with intelligent policing and social changes (not least some real gun controls) that may work. I don't know if we have time.

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Democrats should keep repeating Biden's 350 B effort to reinforce the nation's police forces, and Republicans' refusal to support it.

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"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important."

— T.S. Eliot, poet (26 Sep 1888-1965)

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No amount of legislation will make this a law-abiding country. With so much economic deprivation, so much homelessness, more people all the time dealing with survival while the obscenely rich get obscenely richer, people break laws. Causal realties need to be address to handle the crime that's the consequences of not addressing them. To make a radical change it would behoove us to employ a radical methodology, and I vote for U.B.I. Small experiments with Universal Basic Income have been successful, plus it would demonstrate that we care about each other which is the basic change that we most need.

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Sep 26, 2022·edited Sep 26, 2022

Can anyone here answer whether Snowden could be conscripted into this war?

(not that I want him to be).

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We only talk about street crime when our lives are impacted far more by white collar criminals who are seldom prosecuted. Think of the millions impacted by the Sachlers criminal enterprise or that of the banksters at Wells Fargo that stole millions of people's homes. Or the millions that are affected by pollution and toxic chemical that result in premature death and disability.

I am also surprised at the ignorance of people talking about crime statistics generated by the FBI for its only political purposes. Crime fell dramatically, although with a 20 year lag, when tetraethyllead was banned as a gasoline additive. Millions of children suffered brain damage from the lead in motor vehicle exhaust and the affected individuals had an impairment of the executive function of their brains. Now we have the children of the poor being damaged even while in the womb by industrial chemicals that our captive government agencies fail to regulate.

And it is part of the reason that the United States has the infant mortality and maternal mortality rates of third world countries. The overall health rating of the United States has dropped to where it is now below that of Cuba and barely above that of Bulgaria. But one will not find this mentioned in the corporate media that is owned by men like Robert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos.

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Sep 27, 2022·edited Sep 27, 2022

Fascinating article. I work with people with persistent mental illness in Illinois and those that are Medicaid eligible can petition the government and are generally moved out of backgrounds of homelessness or nursing homes and are integrated into the community with subsidized housing and also provided with transportation and counseling services (provided they can "prove" they are able to live with support in the community). They are called Colbert/Williams class members after the 2011 lawsuit settlement with the State of Illinois that asserted the State was violating the Americans With Disabilities Acts and the Rehabilitation Act by not providing them equal access to the community that they were entitled to as the government took federal funds. So while there are still people with mental illness that are homeless in Illinois I don't think the problem sounds as bad as it is elsewhere. Perhaps a national law could be passed along similar lines by Congress? Any state taking federal funds would be compelled to provide this support to Medicaid-eligible individuals. This is only one aspect of the crime problem but it applies to anyone with persistent mental illness or permanent disabling injury in Illinois. As far as the link between poverty and crime goes that might take more than a coupe of years to fix! If police truly are not investigating thefts like you mention more funding for their efforts seems wise, doesn't it? Although the modern GOP will certainly vote against anything Democrats propose in Congress such bills might pass if Democrats control Congress or if Biden can somehow use the bully pulpit to convince a divided Congress to pass a bill.

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Sep 26, 2022·edited Sep 26, 2022

Democrats should explain that Republican ideology got us here. Their simplistic view of "you get what you deserve" and "you must work to eat" is at the heart of the poverty, homelessness, and lack of mental and physical health care. Things and people have to land on their doorstep for them to feel like they want to do something, and what conservatives want to do is arm themselves literally or figuratively. We have to get our point across that we need to stop it before it starts.

Homelessness and all this pandemic and post-pandemic bad behavior has made it impossible to ignore the result of wealth distribution to only the very top. This boiling point was inevitable. It will serve a purpose. We knew it was coming. Our politicians can explain it, but expecting them to fix it in short order---not going to happen.

I just want to send out love and admiration to everyone trying to make this better. Whether you give what you can, study and teach about the situation, or come up with some wonderful practical solutions, bless you.

Getting the Republicans to help not hurt is damn near impossible these days.

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The fact that the Democrats have not fixed the mental health problems created by disastrous Republican policies is most likely due to the moderate Dems. I've a blogger friend in Portland who lives in a neighborhood with a large homeless camp nearby and his life is hell but the city seems to do nothing.

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I guess we can't build them a basketball court and keep these bored big bozo babies with big bad boy guns occupied by something other than murdering other citizens.

Proves they are less civilized than bored kids in poor neighborhoods that have no jobs for kids.

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I believe the success of the GOP message depends on the audience. If the Dems spend a few dollars to tell Americans the actual GOP record, the lies will anger voters. If the Dems spend their money hiring friends and relatives to put out messages nobody cares about, the lies will convince voters.

Yep, it's that simple.

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We have watched our society disintegrate since Reagan and his "greed is good" acolytes. Police have always had the primary goal of protecting the property of the wealthy, but at one time, they also had a secondary goal of keep the peace (i.e., keeping crime at bay.) That's not really important to them any more; the war on drugs created a battleground for them to inhabit and took the focus of community needs beyond putting pot smokers/sellers in jail. It was the Dems (Clinton) who started militarizing the police. I don't like to be cynical, but I don't think the nosedive is recoverable. We are facing unprecedented upheaval. My late husband used to say, "There is no safe seat for a train wreck."

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