As San Francisco and Seattle go…
The [Austin] city council has voted to rescind prohibitions on camping, sleeping, and panhandling on public sidewalks – but not in front of city hall, of course.
A couple of observations:
(1) I wonder whether most of these rule changes allowing tents and sleeping on sidewalks in cities are passed by city councils and or mayoral orders rather than by citizens’ votes. My guess is that it’s most if not all.
(2) In the comments to the post I linked, some people said that Austin is already overrun with homeless people sleeping outside. So I’m not sure whether this law actually changes anything.
(3) Greg Abbott has tweeted that the state of Texas will override this.
(4) People in the cities involved have gotten used to a level of squalor that even just a few years ago would have been considered intolerable. It’s partly the old boiling frog thing, and it’s partly that they feel helpless to come up with actual solutions and/or unwilling to implement ones that seem too Draconian to liberal sensibilities.
Cities are Demoncrat fiefdoms. If you treat it as a foreign country in which a bunch of child rapists are in power at all levels of the police, mayoral, and whatever levels, that wouldn’t be far wrong.
Just a little bit of exaggeration …..
People in the cities involved have gotten used to a level of squalor that even just a few years ago would have been considered intolerable.
they havent… you just dont hear their complaints..
and the articles and things taht show stuff are quite, negated
you konw, kind of like “teens” means droves of amish youngins..
but look how much power they will get through the census vs other states?
the yelling over the squallor and deseases and rats, and more is being protested
oh.. then there are the few people who have a desease the docs dont know what it is… .and then there is a large contingent coming from the area where ebola is a problem.. ie. flee ebola, cross the river, voila… “safe”
but since every dem candidate wants to expand medicine to cover all these peope… i dont think feminists and the young idiots educated by the system they changed, get whats going to happen
by the way. see some recent photos from venezula?
starvation is not pretty… (south africa too soon)
Regulating the use of common property resources on that scale is properly the business of municipalities. Loitering and disorderly conduct and other nuisance charges are properly part of the state penal code, but it’s up to local government to enforce them. Gov. Abbot should let the locals feel the consequences of their stupidity except to the extent that the work of the state government might be disrupted. Liberals stink.
city councils and or mayoral orders
This, right here. It also depends on the city government model. Are the council members full time or not? I would presume Austin to be full time and as such should be aware of the machinations going on with senior staff.
In my town, they’re part time, and often time the senior staff sticks something in the meeting agenda for a vote that’s never been seen, and presented as a “done deal”. Previous regimes would simply rubber stamp the proposal without too much complaint. Our relatively new council has had this pulled on them, and they’ve pushed back and tabled things.
And if the citizens whine about it, the only way they can overcome this is because they have adequate amount of clout. I’ve only seen that happen once.
hey feel helpless to come up with actual solutions and/or unwilling to implement ones that seem too Draconian to liberal sensibilities.
There are no solutions to the problem of vagrancy, merely adjustments. The churches can run soup kitchens, shelters, and community food cupboards. County and municipal government can assist by providing muscle at the shelters and kitchens and by rousting vagrants making a public nuisance of themselves. A scatter of these characters, of course, need to be arrested and committed. These controversies are controversies because liberals refuse to attend to public order and hygiene because, like Michael Dukakis, they think they’re above all that.
In my town, they’re part time, and often time the senior staff sticks something in the meeting agenda for a vote that’s never been seen, and presented as a “done deal”.
The parliamentary rules in your town are peculiar. The staff pulling these stunts need to be put out on the curb.
In many cities the staff sees its true constituency as the “stakeholders” by which they mainly mean “activists” and their clients. These people exercise their right to be heard until 2 in the morning and the normals have gone to bed – so there is a vote, but if the reporters (assuming there were any) haven’t already gone home, they’re probably on board with the radical staffers’ agenda anyway and will spin any reporting accordingly. So the city council votes, but in effect it’s not really a public votes.
Read how the Bolsheviks took over in Russia. It’s a pretty similar story.
Again, there’s nothing which prevents local councilors from firing troublesome staff. I think you’d have to scrounge to find a locus where those aren’t patronage positions. Come to think of it, there’s nothing which prevents state legislators from writing civil service law to require timely examinations to fill positions but which allows something approximate to an at-will regime in re employee discipline.
These people exercise their right to be heard until 2 in the morning and the normals have gone to bed
And what’s preventing the council from adjourning at a reasonable hour?
Summer in Austin will put a big dent into any increase in homeless encampments, and the homeless don’t like to travel anyway, so I doubt any from the left coast will migrate to Texas. The panhandlers, though, will probably increase, they just won’t be homeless.
Our ultra progressive town (not kidding!) put put “dividers” on the park benches to prevent the homeless (one person in particular spent the day in front of the city hall and community center for months) from sleeping on the park benches.
Solved that problem!
Artfldgr:
“Gotten used to” doesn’t mean people aren’t complaining or that they are happy with the state of affairs.
And I certainly know people who live in such cities and complain. But they also have gotten used to the situation.
The ones who haven’t gotten used to it tend to leave and move elsewhere.
Denver city idjts wanted to do the same thing. But they let it go to a vote and they lost. So that makes them double idjts.
“Gov Abbot should let them feel the consequences of their stupidity” Art Deco
Seattle and San Francisco both demonstrate that regardless of how severe the consequences, democrats will insist that ever greater amounts of money can bring these problems under control.
Proving on one hand that there really is no cure for stupidity. And that ever greater poverty advances their agenda, resulting in Cuba & Venezuela, where the poor ‘prove’ that they are incapable of directing their own lives and need an elite of their betters to run their lives for them.
It’s all about and has always been about power and control. Socialistic ‘solutions’ are the congame that acts as leverage to gain enough power and control to finally drop the facade.
Hong Kong is now experiencing the next ratchett with Hong Kong residents facing deportation and ‘trial’ in mainland China’s communist ‘courts’. Watch for the ChiComs to enact another Tianenmen Square atrocity when the next protest erupts.
My friends in the San Francisco aren’t especially up in arms. There have always been “no-go zones” — the Tenderloin and Hunter’s Point, for two. The Mission is getting worse, but it’s been iffy for a while.
My inflection point was when I learned that the subway escalators downtown were regularly out of order because the homeless were defecating in them late at night until the gears would stop working and the city would have to send in hazmat teams to pressure wash the assemblies to restore working order.
What’s more noticeable for most is how expensive housing is and how crowded the traffic.
San Francisco was such a cupcake of a city as late as the nineties. I miss that city.
“There are no solutions to the problem of vagrancy” Art Deco
For most of our history, vagrancy and homelessness were minimal. Shared cultural values led to consensus regarding that problem and inculcated cultural virtues in the young led to far fewer going down that path.
As neo stated, liberal attitudes will not allow the implementation of draconian solutions, though such severe solutions are only now needed due to the Left’s prior & continuing machinations and liberal’s ongoing refusal to face reality.
And, by the time liberals are forced to face reality, due to the Left’s machinations they will lack the political clout to effect change. While out of fear of the Left’s predictable reactive demonization of them, refuse to align with the right.
They will have forged the chains of their own oppression, just as so many in Cuba did and in Venezuela have done.
Seattle and San Francisco both demonstrate that regardless of how severe the consequences, democrats will insist that ever greater amounts of money can bring these problems under control.
Local governments, especially municipal government, face the most severe constraints on their power to tax.
The Governor is a lawyer and, of course, he is correct on the law.
Bigger question is why the Governors of CA, WA and OR don’t do the same thing.
If the democrats cared 1/2 as much about their deplorable democrat run cities as they do about the immigrants, America might truly be great again. What about those children living in their streets? What about the facilities for their citizens? What about mental health care for the homeless? Protection against killers and rapists? Jobs for the able and willing? and on and on and on. Where are those wonderful democrat leaders in the “fly to” cities of the elite coasts?
“America is at that awkward stage; it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” ? Claire Wolfe
I live an hour and a half South West of Austin and I usually take a detour of about 25 miles on the East side of Dallas traveling up 1-35 to Dallas, the good news is the speed limit on the detour is 80 mph and you can get away with running right under 90 just to avoid going 10 to 20 mph across the parking lot that is Austin on I-35. Austin is a strange beautiful city that has been a massive total traffic screw up for decades, lots of good folks and a whole bunch of commie pinko butt-heads who have not managed to manage traffic. For about 50 years the Lake Travis West of Austin has had the only nude beaches in a state park, “Hippie Hollow” and it’s still that way today.
It will be interesting to see if the new regulations stick since Austin is also the Texas state capital and Gov. Abbot has already said “we ain’t gonna do that”. What will be fun to watch is if, and when some of those Anti-fa people try to get weird and wooly messing with a Texas who does not want to get whacked in the head and she pulls out her gun and makes a hole in him. It could happen.
Cornhead
The Governor is a lawyer and, of course, he is correct on the law.
Bigger question is why the Governors of CA, WA and OR don’t do the same thing.
Occam’s Razor: TX Governor is Republican. Governors of CA, WA and OR are Democrats.
OldTexas…so you’re a Seguin or San Antonio resident? 🙂
I’d take that “new” by-pass every day of the year just to avoid Austin traffic…and the commie pinko butt-heads have screwed up more than just the traffic & streets. Try building anything or digging a hole near any place that looks like an aquifer recharge zone.
And you are 100% correct…The shooting just might start in Austin when the antifa folks meet a CCW permit holder…the Saturday night specials “shoot just fine every other day of the week too.” (classic movie reference for those who care)
– Boerne, Texas –
>People in the cities involved have gotten used to a level of squalor
Modernism gets to use to a lot of things more quickly than expected because it masks its apathy with concern.
The Puritans used to hang “sturdy beggars”. They really knew how to fight the war on poverty.
http://general-history.com/sturdy-beggars/
Civilized residents of Seattle, San Fran, LA, and Austin should hope they do not go the way of Portland, lest they be set upon and bludgeoned by mindless subhuman hooligans.
Artfldgr:
“Gotten used to” doesn’t mean people aren’t complaining or that they are happy with the state of affairs.
And I certainly know people who live in such cities and complain. But they also have gotten used to the situation.
The ones who haven’t gotten used to it tend to leave and move elsewhere.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
im talking from the experience of being homeless twice and growing up in an inner city slum…
your using the words wrongly… they are NOT used to it anymore than a person who adapts to a concentration camp is used to it.. giving up, feeling helpless and so on, and stop expressing stuff is not getting used to it.
would you prefer they show it by hunting and killing these people at night?
what would you want them to do? and move? really? move? well, i am glad your freaking rich that that is an item on the menu, but the VAST majority of the people there are trapped there by tax code and other things..
go live in section 8 housing for a year and let me know if you get used to it
they thought we got usd to it, we were a happyu family
i never got used to it, i just learned that showing people like you that it still mattered was a waste of time and energy… and that could be spent in another place
get used to it?
i never got used to having to pick my ball out from a pipe full of junkie needles
i never got used to waking up and having roaches eat at the corners of my mouth
i never got used to being beaten, and the street fights (shot at, stabbed, and more)
i never got used to the crime, or the fear of multiples (the fav or the minority)
i never got used to the filth… or the rats..
i never got used to being judged by my address label
but you would think so.. because why?
lacking experience, you fill in the empty space with what you were taught
go study the french revolution
they never got used to it either.
to the untrained eye the apathy by futility can appear to be acclimation..
even more so if its slow to realize that a condition has changed and respond to it
wrong interpretation of appearances from the surface…
if you took the law away for 24 hours and told these same “acclimated” people that they could do anything they wanted, even exterminate without any problems coming back to them at all, and maybe even a reward..
you would find a bunch of dead and tortured..
they would have been killed and tortured by the people who were deemed acclimated just as long as they had their hands tied and had too much life, property, friends and such invested.
“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose”
even now… you find those acclimated people are quite passive aggressive
and your not acclimated if your passive aggressive, you obviously have a target
By the way, show them they can act, and suddenly their acclimation would go away
Unlike the canary, they wont have a problem leaving the cage
in fact, given a small op they run, sometimes to their own destruction they are so comfortable… Or what do you think Get rich or die as a sentiment is about? that dying is better than acclimating…
What your confusing with adaptation is learned helplessness..
in this situation, being helpless and quiet makes it appear they are adapting
the soviet union is a great study in this… but don’t bother as usual
[the reason was what the state was always trying to do to get people to act or not]
From psychology today, the feminist psychology mag:
1) You Only Get More of What You Resist—Why?
2) The Surprising Power of Just Giving Up
that above would prevent resistance… no?
fear of being a nazi would too..
fear of reprisal?
What links these two on-the-surface almost mystifying expressions is the underlying notion that it’s wise to accept what is, if only to put yourself in the best possible position to change it—or to achieve the freedom to move past it, and on to something else. And I should stress that I’m in no way intimating that you adopt a defeatist attitude in the face of what you deem inequitable or unjust, just that your resistance doesn’t end up taking the form of resisting yourself.
this should have been easy to see in my situation at work..
they think i adapted just as you said..
But is biding your time and topping from the bottom adapting?
no… a normal healthy person does the above..
straight from – Leon F Seltzer Ph.D
You know they adapted to it when they get upset the homeless will LEAVE because it will change the world they are used to
whereas my earlier thesis was that you can make bad matters worse by focusing on them, this post stresses that turning your back on them can sometimes make them better—or disappear them entirely. Leon F Seltzer Ph.D
let me describe the basic concept of “learned helplessness,” so-named on the basis of a famous research experiment by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania (1967). Without going into the fairly intricate (and frankly, unpleasant) details of this experiment—or rather, series of experiments—I’ll briefly summarize its key findings.
this is not getting used to… this is being reprogrammed by force and despair
the politicians are doing what people dont want… this lets them FEEL power… and is their reward and why they work so hard at doing this.. they also know if they subject people to things they dont want enough, they will have learned helplessness and so, will eventually stop opposing them… this doesnt mean they acclimated… for most, it means they are biding their time, acting in maladaptive ways (buying lottery tickets instead of saving), and more…
this was known and is being applied…
why wouldn’t soviet style people doing soviet style things not know soviet style abuse of such psychology?
Dale Fogle (1978) suggested that this theory had become overgeneralized. In an extremely well-reasoned article intriguingly entitled “Learned Helplessness and Learned Restlessness,” he argues that pro-active responses to threat—such as avoidance, escape, or other mechanisms used in the effort to regain control—can themselves be maladaptive.
this is what your seeing in people not acting, not throwing out the bums, not voting otherwise… they are clinging superstitiuously to the things and methods which in the past worked to change things… so much so, they refuse to change that..
now
you have the problem as one wall
you have the learned helplessness as another wall
you have learned restlessness as another wall
And the politicians subjecting people to this and not suffering the responsibility, control the door..
and thus, the hogs are captured..
Artfldgr:
Once again, you misunderstand my point.
I did not use the word “adaptation,” but you focus on that concept and say I’m confusing it with learned helplessness. I am not confusing it at all.
This is what I wrote in my post [emphasis added]:
That’s not a description of some sort of successful adaptation. In fact, I specifically mention that they feel helpless.
Artfldgr:
One more thing—
When I generalize about people “getting used to it” I also obviously don’t mean every single person. I am sure there are many people as well as certain groups of people who are not used to it. I am speaking of the aggregate of the population and also in particular of those civic-minded citizens who might ordinarily be expected to do something about the decline of their once-proud city.
Ymarsakar on July 2, 2019 at 4:44 pm said:
Cities are Demoncrat fiefdoms. If you treat it as a foreign country in which a bunch of child rapists are in power at all levels of the police, mayoral, and whatever levels, that wouldn’t be far wrong.
om on July 2, 2019 at 4:51 pm said:
Just a little bit of exaggeration …..
* * *
…except in Rotherham.
Carmen on July 2, 2019 at 8:35 pm said:
If the democrats cared 1/2 as much about their deplorable democrat run cities as they do about the immigrants, America might truly be great again. What about those children living in their streets?
* * *
Well, it’s okay, so long as Austin doesn’t buy them any beds from … well, anywhere, I suppose.
Aesop Fan
Except the Rotherham is in another country, but other than that there was no exaggeration. Keep your wits and your credibility, or defend Yammer.
Generally speaking, the trick to changing behavior is to make the negative consequences of such behavior much worse than the reward. You can do this by either penalizing negative behavior or rewarding good behavior, or both.
Unfortunately, in cities governed by liberals, their answer is always to remove the penalties for bad behavior and increase the penalties for good behavior. This creates a downward spiral that accelerates with each successive application.
Whatever you subsidize you get more of and whatever you tax you get less of. Liberals subsidize irresponsibility and tax responsibility. How sad for them.
The idea that Seattle and San Francisco are being buried in feces seems entirely appropriate.
om – “If you treat it as a foreign country” ought to cover the UK, I should think.
AesopFan:
So Yammer was speaking of Rotherham and the Islamic rape gangs from “south Asia?” Who knew, and you so prescient too. I assumed he was just expanding from San Francisco and Seattle to all of the USA; you know keeping within the scope of the post by Neo. But I see you feel his wisdom should be viewed as encompassing UK and the world.
But back to some basic questions. If you choose to think.
Explain how the Democrat party of the USA correlates to the Labor or other parties in the UK. Please account for the differences in the USA and UK governing systems and traditions before you go down the rabbit hole of parsing Yammers words and thoughts.
om – get a grip; it was a sideways jocular evocation.
AesopFan:
I’ll try not to always take you seriously in the future.
I’m glad you took me seriously in the past!
But don’t do it always 😉
This is serious:
I hope you have a Happy Independence Day, and the same to everyone else reading Neo’s blog. Well, the rest of the country too, but I know how much it’s appreciated here.
Hooray for freedom of speech — if only we can keep it, in spite of the fascists in our government and media!