Lets talk about the homeless

Bumping old thread. so what.

            Let's think this through. Countries that don't like the usa and terrorist groups. Let's start with the largest group of countries who would do us harm: certain middle eastern states. The terrorists who would also wish to harm the usa come from the same region. This brings up a good question. Why do people from the middle east dislike the united states?

         One popular explanation has been "It's because we're good". Others would like to blame it on their religion. The answer, however, is this: they hate America because of its constant military presence and for the violence the American military has committed against them. They have seen the American government prop up brutal dictators, give them weapons to use against their own people, then bomb their country to hell when they're no longer useful. The most conservative estimates of the civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan in the most recent "wars" count in the hundreds of thousands.

             America created its enemies through use of its military. It's a sick positive feedback loop wherein by "protecting the homeland" by massacring the population of these areas, the friends and families of slain civilians are more likely to take up arms against the USA, in turn leading to an increase in the United State's military spending and violence.

Without our military, we wouldn't need protection.

im not going to deny that our militaries existence creates enemy's, I agree with you there. And while i dont agree with alot of what our government and military does, i have to give them a little bit of a break, being the most powerful country with the most powerful military, its not easy to keep everyone happy.

ok, I'll bite.

The goal of islam is to submit the rest of the world to islam. I don't know about you, but living under an islamic government would suck.

As for your whole argument, it kinda falls apart when you realize that Osama Bin Ladin and his allies was one of the biggest recipients of US weapons in the middle east. Yet he still hated us.

And ya your a fucking moron.

True, they would like to convert everyone, as would many Christians. Not really. I already said something about the US government working with government leaders. Supporting bin Laden was no different. That whole situation was based on the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The US gave him weapons and training to fight the Soviets which he obviously had no problem with. He only turned against the USA when they deployed troops to fight Iraq in the original gulf war. He rightly believed that the USA had no business being there. After 11 years of bombing Iraq and military moves against other countries, Osama struck back in an attack on the WTC. Those attacks led to the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a recent poll that was taken in Afghanistan, 92% of those polled didn't know about the attacks on the World Trade Center. Many "radical Islamic terrorists" see what they're doing as repelling an invader.

As I said before, the terrorists want to attack us in retaliation for what our military has done to them. Even if what you say is taken to be true; that we need a military to deter attacks from those who would hate us no matter what we do, that doesn't mean we have to always be on the offensive. Look at Switzerland. Having a military didn't stop 9/11. Our military incurred those attacks. So while you can say that we could be possibly be attacked in the, based solely on our economic might (lol) the facts just don't support that. There's a reason the planes were flown into New York and not New Zealand.

i didnt read because i dont have the time left in study hall but not all homeless people are bums some have just had serious financial problems and lost everything there are extenuating circumstances but if i see one im always will to give them a couple bucks for food half the time it will truly make their day

My dad works as the head of a homeless outreach program here in Las Vegas.  He has a lot of success stories getting homeless people off the streets and back into society, but a lot of em refuse to leave the streets too

giving bums an apartment is an incentive to become a bum. its like feeding the trolls.

They are not just giving them to any bum, you have to meet the requirements. The requirements are that you are costing the system more then the cost of an apartment. No way would people want to try and put themselves in the kind of situation this program caters to.

Its funny because you can really tell if you've read the article or havent by what you post.

yep. economic incentives for poor economic choices lead to those choices occurring more often. I would count providing homes as more incentive than the promise of medical care. It's a bit more tangible.  That system would get abused as fast as welfare. No doubt the rates of "homeless" people would spike. How about instead of lessening the cost of the homeless by giving them houses to save on medical care, we bring the cost to zero and don't give them anything. In fact, end all state sponsered charity. That will get all but the severely mentally ill off the streets. And honestly, not much can be done for them anyway. I'll provide charity on my own terms. We don't need another government program pulling in billions of tax dollars to fund bad habits. So that's my solution. Decrease homelessness by making homelessness a near death sentence. This of course applies to adults only. I believe children should be taken care of as their homelessness is often a direct result of the actions of their parents.

Speak of the devil.

 Nothing new will enter my head until after exams are over.

So we should have just sat there and watched while Sadam overran Kuwait and subjected them to his dictatorship?

No, Osama Bin Ladin hates the united states because we stand for everything islam would like to crush: Freedom of religion, islam respects none. The right to question the government, islam respects none.

Get rid of the US military and the world goes to hell in about 4 months. We do alot that does not get published. There are soldiers keeping African tribes from killing each other. Wonder why the drug cartel's don't 100% own South America?

I was going to tl;dr before I realized I was in my digital media class which is a joke.


So, in my opinion, human beings are an inherently evil and selfish species. This problem won't be fixed because everybody is so focused on themselves that individuals will go out of their way to find reasons to only look out for themselves. Personally, high taxes don't bother me that much. Better infrastructure, safer roads, bridges, highways, cheaper buses, public transportation are all things that I like. But lets be honest. We only care about this kind of stuff when its convenient for us to do so. If I've got a big test coming up? I could give less of a shit about the homeless and a plan to keep the homeless from being homeless. I'VE got to get the good grade. Its ME that I'm concentrated on, not some bum that I see when I walk down the street. Bringing me back to the point that this will never ever work because the human race is inherently evil and selfish.


Its a valiant proposition though.

possibly my single favorite post so far

We weren't in Rawanda?

Ya, the UN does not do shit. We can agree on that.
Example: every UN peace keeping mission.

                Let's start this from the beginning. In the decades leading up to the gulf war, the US funded Saddam with billions of dollars in order to keep him from forming an alliance with the Soviets and in support of his  war with Iran. Funding given to a man known for abusing his people. Anyway, the only result of that war was Iraqi debt. Tensions with Kuwait rose over debt Iraq owed to them and disputed boarders that had been an issue for a long time. The US had even told Saddam that they would not interfere in relations with Kuwait. So I would argue that the United States helped set Iraq on a path to the gulf war.

              I'll grant that bin Laden would probably hate the United States regardless of their actions in the middle east. However, it's clear that we put a target for violence on our backs by our military involvement in Middle East. As I said, there's a reason planes weren't flown into buildings in New Zealand (aside from the fact that it's all sheep farms and hobbits). When the Saudis brought in  US troops Osama saw them as infidels who had no business there. He hates us because we're there. 

              To sum those two paragraphs up: United States funded Iraq's war with Iran which led to the Gulf war which led to terrorists attacking us.

              That's great, the USA and their military exist to help people and save the world. Funny how they stood by while Saddam gassed his people until he was no longer of use. We could go a bit further into the past and talk about the other totalitarian regimes they put and kept into power in various other countries but that's another post for another day.  I agree, the military does do a lot that goes unpublished. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians dead; not unpublished and yet not widely known that the nuclear bombs were completely unnecessary, murdering children and rape in Vietnam, the countless deaths of Iraqi and Afghan citizens. Wonder why drug cartels even exist? Drug prohibition enforced by the military. Ridding ourselves of the amoral, murdering thugs that are the military could be considered the greatest move towards peace in the history of humanity.

Please take your completely different topic to a different thread.

At this point i doubt folks are actually reading new content but here's the empirical evidence for how providing housing for the chronic homeless can result in an overall reduction of homelessness.

http://www.commonground.org/?page_id=21

Street to Home – an innovative approach to outreach – reduced homelessness in the 20 blocks surrounding Times Square by 87% over a two-year period.

It's probably too late now, but many cities do point in time counts to help get a figure for the number of homeless individuals and families around this time of year. If you want to get a better sense for what their life is like, volunteer to be a part of a point in time count.

Also look for groups who are doing the Homeless vulnerability index -- similar to the point in time, but it is more focused on trying to identify the risks that the homeless population faces, while also finding those who are most at risk.


the Common ground project in the first year took what might be the common sense approach, find those who are most likely to be successful at maintaining their housing situation. This failed miserably.

When they came back to the drawing board they reconsidered the approach and instead of taking those who were the 'top of the list' (in terms of most likely to succeed) they went from a bottom up approach. By finding those who were most removed from society (no phone, no address, not in shelters) who were chronically homeless, and at the highest risk for death, and providing them the access to housing and the support to maintain that housing they ended up returning an 87% reduction of the homeless around time square.