Our postmodern Waste Lands get all turned and twisted…
1] Nawlins don’t do gun control, and as things along those lines get even worse (concealed carry, blahblah) AND as murders remain astounding, the city’s gotta do some real thinkin bout how to keep the carnage to a reasonable level… Reasonable defined here as before the point at which local hospitals are so overwhelmed that the city’s gotta pay for the bloodied to be coptered out.
Now keep in mind that the state of Louisiana could give a shit about educating its people, so it takes a whole hell of a lot for it to, say, open a school. But lookee here – the city came up with a devilishly clever go ’round in response to the latest BIG GUNS FOR ALL legislation there.
The plan is to open a vocational-technical school in the Eighth District Police Station. According to state law, guns are prohibited within 1,000 feet of a school. Signage will alert visitors of the firearm-free zone.
IN. IN the police station. See what they did there? At least the cops will have a small measure of protection. And if the price is having to educate at least a small slice of the population, so be it.
2] It’s official. SF has declared that after almost a decade of massive, city-destroying, filth and crime, the time for compassion is over.
‘We have had to move from a compassionate city to a city of accountability, and I have been leading the efforts to ensure that we are addressing this issue differently than we have before,’ [the mayor] said on Thursday in a change of tack on the issue.
‘We are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments which may even include criminal penalties,’ she explained, with the ‘sweeps’ scheduled to begin in less than two weeks once staff are retrained to follow new legal guidance.
Of course, aside from the fact that there’s nothing remotely compassionate about what SF has been doing all these years, I think the city will find that thousands of people who have long considered themselves owners of the city’s streets will not be very nice about the change of tack.
July 19th, 2024 at 3:19PM
Yes, it’s time for the SF street owners to move to ‘Nawlins. I’m sure they would welcome them with open arms,
July 19th, 2024 at 3:31PM
Indeed, that’s the question. Where WILL they go?
My guess is something like this: A significant number, having been made very unwelcome in SF, will in fact find other cities. Seattle and Portland, for instance, look totally hapless in the face of homeless populations, and therefore are good prospects for migrants from SF. Another big chunk will find housing of one sort or another, feeling pushed to the limit by the turn of events. Another chunk will end up in jail for a longish time. Another chunk will be committed to mental institutions.
July 19th, 2024 at 10:00PM
I think you’d have to change state law in CA to commit them to mental institutions. My sense from Portland is that the real problem is not the homeless themselves, who are mostly too drugged out and crazy to put up organized opposition to any municipal policy, but the substantial and well-funded network of homeless advocacy groups that organize opposition for them. It would be funny though if the west coast blue states started shipping their homeless to inland red states, like an inversion of Abbott’s and DeSantis’s policies of shipping illegal immigrants to blue states. A whole new era of American federalism could open whereby states ship their problem people to one another en masse.
July 20th, 2024 at 5:50AM
Yes, and then secession efforts would start up.
Word would get out even to the druggiest homeless that if you fetch up in Idaho or South Dakota you’re gonna be hauled in every day to mandatory charismatic revival meetings. If shouting all the verses to “JESUS SAVES!” for two hours straight sounds less attractive to you than blowing coke, you are likely to look elsewhere for your homesteading.