The Homeless Myth

It’s not about the real estate, it’s about the drug use and mental illness


Los Angeles used to be known as the epicenter of the entertainment industry, nutty health fads, and compulsive narcissism. These days, it’s ground zero for the homeless crisis and its myths.

Every underpass harbors grimy tent cities with their own colonies of rats and roaches. Schizophrenics wander the most fashionable streets shouting at the sky. Human waste and needles litter downtown streets. Typhus and Hepatitis A spread out from these oases of misery into the general population.

It’s not that the city doesn’t care. If anything, Los Angeles cares too much.  Voters have passed multiple propositions spending over $4.6 billion on the homeless. They raised their own sales tax. They built homeless housing at as much as $500,000 per unit. That’s enough to buy a mansion in some parts of America.

Did that solve the problem? Try walking through one of those tent cities and you’ll find out.

After all this, the number of homeless is up 12% to 58,936 in Los Angeles County and up 16% to 36,165 in Los Angeles. Despite all those billions of dollars thrown at the problem, only 3 districts saw a decrease in the homeless population. Fortunately, no lessons were learned from this Sisyphean exercise.

Billboards all across the city feature a multicultural cast of young activists chanting, “Homes End Homelessness”. The only problem is that homes don’t end homelessness. Homelessness is not the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem. That’s the real news in the latest homeless numbers.

While pro-homeless activists falsely claimed that only 29% of LA’s homeless had drug and alcohol problems or mental illness, the Los Angeles Times, after reviewing the same questionnaires used as the basis for the data, found that actually 67% had a mental illness or drug and alcohol problems.   

29% to 67% is a huge difference.

But, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's acting executive director explained that it was a format issue.  The difference between a majority of the homeless have drug, alcohol issues and suffer from mental illness, and only a minority do, is a formatting issue as big as a typhus outbreak.

Fudging the numbers completely transforms reality.

Pro-homeless activists blame the homeless crisis on the free market which pegs home values and rentals to what people are willing to pay, as opposed to what a bunch of non-profits think they ought to be. But most people don’t react to being priced out of housing by staying in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country and spending the day shouting at the sky. They move somewhere affordable. Homelessness does tend to overlap with high rental prices, but those overlap with lefty cities, and the social and policy problems that come from their cultures and their political agendas.

Homelessness is not the issue. It’s a symptom of the real problems of drug abuse and mental illness.

It’s not as if we didn’t already know this. The man standing outside a supermarket and shouting that they stole his spleen in Schenectady is not suffering from high real estate prices. In modern times, vagrants, the old, more accurate term, are victims of their personal demons, not capitalism.

The homeless myth is built on denying the obvious.

Or, as the LA Times headline puts it, “Are many homeless people in L.A. mentally ill? New findings back the public’s perception.” Yes, your eyes aren’t lying to you. The activists gaslighting you however are.

That 67% isn’t the result of expert estimates. It’s self-reported. The activists conducting the ‘Point in Time’ count that is used to estimate the homeless population ask each homeless person if they have "substance abuse issues" or a "mental health problem". 46% of the homeless interviewed were willing to state that they had a substance abuse problem and 51% that they were suffering from mental illness.

The two obviously overlap quite a bit.

But the actual numbers are going to be much worse than the self-reported numbers.

The University of California’s Policy Lab interviewed 64,000 homeless people nationwide and found that 50% of homeless people said that mental illness had contributed to their homelessness and 51% said that drugs and alcohol issues had contributed to their homelessness.

Whom are you going to believe, the homeless or the activists who continue to lie about them?

78% reported that they suffered from mental problems and 75% from substance abuse problems.

Among homeless women, 95% blamed mental health problems for their homelessness.

These numbers completely destroy the myth of homelessness. The issue isn’t the availability of housing. It’s a social problem caused by drugs, mental illness and broken families. The term ‘homeless’ is wrong. It perpetuates a myth in which the issue is free market real estate and neighborhood gentrification.

The myth hurts the homeless, who are actually people with mental issues and drug problems, but boosts the billions of dollars in spending passing through groups with vested interests in diverting attention from the real problems while waging the traditional lefty campaign against capitalism.

As the numbers continue to tell the truth, the homeless gaslighting has become ridiculous.

The executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority claimed that his agency's numbers were accurate and insisted that the homeless were just like everyone else. “Most people with mental illness are housed. The vast majority of people with serious substance abuse issues are housed. They’re using their substances in their bedrooms and in their living rooms and you’re not watching it.”

Even in LA, 67% of the population isn't so mentally ill or abusing so many drugs that they can't function.

The homeless myth has created the homeless crisis by enabling dysfunctional behavior by a dysfunctional population. The measures that pro-homeless activists have claimed would help the homeless have hurt them badly. Allowing people with mental illness and drug problems to live on the streets has led to unsanitary conditions and disease outbreaks that have primarily hurt the homeless.

A fortune has been plowed into constructing insanely overpriced housing units, while the homeless population continues to grow, because the cause of homelessness has nothing to do with homes.

The homeless aren’t the victims of the free market, but of the socialists using them as political weapons.

The homeless crisis is what happened when lefty cities legalized drugs, stopped institutionalizing the severely mentally ill, while legalizing street camping and pouring billions into homeless services.

Homes don’t solve homelessness. Treating mental illness and fighting drug use does.

SOURCE 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/homeless-myth-daniel-greenfield/





Muslim Drag Queen in Vice Mag: Islam Is 'Inherently Queer'

Robert Spencer

Over the years many people have asked me why Leftists so love Islam as to turn a blind eye to the global jihad, despite the complete opposition of their moral perspectives. The short answer is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend: the Left, avid to destroy America, saw a group that has been trying to destroy the free world for 1,400 years and saw an ally.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any cracks in the edifice. In an attempt Thursday to shore up the Leftist/Islamic alliance, a self-described “Muslim drag queen” named Amrou Al-Kadhi, also known as “Glamrou,” has published an article in Vice magazine entitled “why islam is inherently queer” (yes, all lower case; are capital letters homophobic?). It’s a dogged exercise in ignoring the obvious.

In an extract from their book ‘Unicorn’, Amrou Al-Kadhi (aka Glamrou) explains how they discovered the queerness in their faith

“Glamrou” starts off by implying that Muhammad himself would have been sympathetic to his behavior: “Prophet Muhammed once said, ‘Islam began as something strange and will return to being something strange, so give blessings to those who are strange.’ Amen Muhammed! ”

He might also have noted that Muhammad is depicted in a hadith as having said: “The revelation does not come to me when I am in the garment of any woman except Aisha” (Sahih Bukhari 54.7.2442). Was Muhammad himself the first “Muslim drag queen”? Imagine the paroxysms of joy this would inspire in the Vice magazine offices!

Their enthusiasm might end up being dampened, however, by the fact that despite the fact that the hadith collection Muslims consider to be the most reliable (Sahih Bukhari) quotes Muhammad talking about prancing around in the clothes of his child bride Aisha, the prophet of Islam is also depicted as saying this: “Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Lot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done’” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462).

Unfortunately for Glamrou and Vice, the Qur’an contains numerous condemnations of homosexual activity: “And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, ‘Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds? Indeed, you approach men with desire, instead of women. Rather, you are a transgressing people.’…And We rained upon them a rain [of stones]. Then see how was the end of the criminals” (Qur’an 7:80-84).

It is no surprise that Amrou Al-Kadhi doesn’t mention any of that in his Vice magazine piece. It doesn’t fit his narrative. But unfortunately for him, many of his coreligionists are well aware of these passages and others like them. The ones who are unaware of them and their implications are gay rights activists in the West.

Case in point: back in 2013, when Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), of which I am vice president, ran ads on buses in San Francisco highlighting the mistreatment of gays in Islamic law, gay advocates in San Francisco and elsewhere condemned not that mistreatment, but our ads.

Theresa Sparks, a transgender who was the chief of San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission, declared that Geller was “posting these ads to suggest that all Muslims hate gays. Some cultures do discriminate, and that’s wrong. It all depends who you’re talking to. But she’s trying to generalize and cast this wide net around a diverse group of people.”

The ads actually consisted simply of quotes from Muslim leaders regarding Islam’s death penalty for homosexuality, including Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most influential Sunni cleric in the world, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of the foremost Shi’ite entity in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The ads neither stated nor suggested that “all Muslims hate gays.” Sparks was not reported as saying anything about the anti-gay statements of the Muslim leaders quoted in the ads.

Instead, Chris Stedman, a proclaimed atheist who is assistant humanist chaplain at Harvard, published an article at Salon entitled “Stop trying to split gays and Muslims,” also attacking our ads. Noting with indignation the AFDI's “series of anti-Muslim advertisements in San Francisco quoting Muslim individuals making anti-LGBT statements,” Stedman declared his “appreciation that the LGBT community in San Francisco is standing up against her efforts to drive a wedge between LGBT folks and Muslims.”

As far as Stedman was concerned, the real problem was those who called attention to the plight of gays under Islamic law, not the actual mistreatment of gays under Islamic law.

Then in April 2017, when I appeared at the University at Buffalo. I say I “appeared,” because to say “I spoke” would be exaggerating. Rather, I spoke a few sentences and made a couple of points in between being screamed at by Leftist and Islamic supremacist fascists who think they’re opposing fascism. One young man held a sign that read “Queers Against Islamophobia.”

The crowd booed energetically when I attempted to read from Islamic authorities about Islam’s death penalty for homosexuality. Even to read from Islamic sources is hate, apparently, at the University at Buffalo – unless, of course, one endorses such penalties rather than oppose them.

Other gays also stand in solidarity with Muslims against Islamophobes. In April 2017, the College Republicans chapter at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, invited me to speak there. Eight days before the event, this invitation came to the attention of a young Kirksville resident who called himself Bella Waddle.

Waddle tweeted: “Truman’s College Repubs are hosting anti-Muslim extremist Robert Spencer on the 13th. I think y’all know what to do... #bashthefash,” followed by an emoji of a fist. Bella Waddle identified himself on his Facebook page as “Just another queer anarchist,” ending his Facebook bio with three symbols that were far more incompatible than Bella appeared to know: the hammer and sickle, the peace sign, and a heart. So this self-described “queer anarchist” thought of me as an “anti-Muslim extremist” who ought not to have been given a platform at Truman State University or, presumably, anywhere else.

I’m sure Glamrou would feel the same way about anyone who pointed out Islamic law regarding gays. I only hope that neither he nor Bella Waddle, Theresa Sparks, Chris Stedman or the editors of Vice magazine run into any true believers.

SOURCE 






CNN Tries to Get Interior Department Official Fired for Opposing Jihad Violence

Robert Spencer

So it turns out that the acting director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, has denied the Left’s “climate change” mythology, and opposes jihad violence and illegal immigration. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski is out for blood, trying to get Pendley for heresy, that is, for his dissent from Leftist orthodoxy.

My first reaction to this was, so what? William Perry Pendley is in the Bureau of Land Management. What does that have to do with “global warming,” unless Kaczynski thinks that the sea levels are going to rise and swallow whole cities, including Obama’s new beachfront estate, and we’re all going to be dead in 12 years? What do jihad violence and illegal immigration have to do with land management? Kaczynski here shows that he would have been a terrific Gestapo official: why no, sir, you cannot have a position as a grocery clerk, because you have shown insufficient ardor for the Führer.

And indeed, the left is increasingly open about its totalitarianism. Those with dissenting views will not be allowed to hold jobs, even if those jobs have nothing to do with the subject of their dissent. A few years ago I was invited to address an education conference in California that had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam; the hate-filled fascist Georgetown University thug Nathan Lean got the cowardly Catholic bishop Jaime Soto, under whose auspices the conference was being held, to cancel my appearance. (I spoke at the conference as scheduled, in a venue outside the bishop’s purview.) And also a few years ago, the Washington Post discovered that Qur’an-burning pastor Terry Jones was driving for Uber; they duly got him fired. I don’t approve of book-burning, but it is not illegal in the United States, and the idea that a man must be hounded forever and prevented from making a living for views that dissent from the Left’s reveals what Leftists really are.

Among William Perry Pendley’s heresies was that he “has repeatedly pushed hardline anti-Muslim views, including citing an article by anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer in a 2018 tweet to claim Islam was at war with America.”

Here Kaczynski employs the familiar smear of Leftist “journalists,” that opposing jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others makes one “anti-Muslim.” That could only be true if all Muslims endorse jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others. Does Kaczynski believe that? If so, he should accuse himself of “Islamophobia” and resign in disgrace from CNN. In reality, opposing such things doesn’t make one “anti-Muslim” any more than opposing the Nazis during World War II made one “anti-German.” I’ve only said that about ten thousand times, and have said it directly to Kaczynski in emails. He doesn’t take any note of it, because he is not a real journalist, he is a Leftist propagandist who is not interested in the truth, but only in shaping the world by imposing his narrative upon it. He may succeed for a while, but all totalitarian thought-control breaks down in the end under the weight of reality.

In this case, reality may break in on Kaczynski in a most unpleasant way, when he discovers that the Islamic jihadis he has enabled and run interference for are something less than grateful.

Kaczynski smeared Pendley with this: “‘Who knew? Islam’s war with America started just up the road in Greeley, Colorado!,’ Pendley tweeted. In the article, Spencer floats unfounded conspiracies about ‘leftists’ allying with ‘Islamic hardliners who adhere to Sharia, a system of laws that would have many of them executed.'”

The PJ Media article in question details how Leftist were banning the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which Muslim Brotherhood theorist and Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb also found objectionable. That wasn’t a conspiracy theory at all. Both the Leftist hatred for the song and Qutb’s similar hatred for it are amply documented in the article and elsewhere.

What is ironic here is that Kaczynski claims that I spread “unfounded conspiracies about ‘leftists’ allying with ‘Islamic hardliners who adhere to Sharia, a system of laws that would have many of them executed.'” Yet in demonizing me for opposing jihad terror, he enables those Islamic hardliners. In claiming that the idea that Leftists would ally with Islamic hardliners is a “conspiracy theory,” the hardcore Leftist Kaczynski allies with Islamic hardliners to try to destroy those who stand against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others. Conspiracy theory?

Kaczynski also objects to Pendley for saying that the Department of Homeland Security should focus on jihad terror rather than “right-wing extremism”; Kaczynski quotes acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan saying that “extremism from white supremacists” is “one of the most ‘potent ideologies’ driving acts violence in the US.” He notes that Pendley said this in 2010, but doesn’t bother to inform his hapless readers that few people were worrying about “right-wing extremism” in 2010. Nor does he bother to inform them that the idea that “right-wing extremism” is a greater threat than jihad terrorism is based on studies with numerous flawed premises.

We have just learned regarding the jihad massacre last week in Paris that the jihad murderer Mickael Harpon “had caused alarm among his colleagues as far back as 2015, when he defended the massacre of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper by two brothers vowing allegiance to al-Qaeda. But even though a police official charged with investigating suspected radicalization among the force questioned the colleagues, none of them wanted to file an official complaint.”

Why didn’t they? The answer is obvious. None of them wanted to file an official complaint for fear of the French counterparts of Andrew Kaczynski. They were afraid if they did, articles like this one about William Perry Pendley would be in their future, and their career would be in ruins.

Yes, by stigmatizing and demonizing opposition to jihad terror, Leftist “journalists” are getting people killed. If CNN were a genuine news source, it would fire Andrew Kaczynski and repudiate his hit piece on Pendley. But it isn’t, and it won’t.

SOURCE




Australia: ABC Chairwoman Ita Buttrose laments that the Australian media landscape is “too white” and not representative of our multicultural society. She even suggests we may need quotas

Leftist racism never stops

Quotas assume employers are biased because, whether they know it or not, they might be favouring one race over another.

Using quotas to ensure representation of racial groups on the telly, or the boardroom is a move in the wrong direction and could lead to more social division as affirmative action gives way to merit.

It used to be progressive to be colour-blind –  to focus on character over skin colour. But we have flipped this over: now we see race in everything.

If Buttrose wants to “better reflect the culture of Australia” she should focus on who we are — and not what colour we are.

We are a nation of larrikins who, regardless of where we were born, or our level of income, believe this is the best country on Earth.

This was a finding of the Australian Talks National Survey that Buttrose was spruiking while complaining about our pale media.

If we want a more egalitarian, liberal society we should resist blunt instruments such as quotas.

Australia has developed a harmonious, multicultural society by accepting our differences — and sometimes even making fun of them.

Historically, this has been the argument against the introduction of federal ‘hate speech’ laws. Dividing Australians by race would threaten social cohesion.

Racism is not accepted in Australia.  On the rare occasion a politician or commentator says something even remotely racist, they are swiftly mobbed and sometimes sacked. These are not the responses of a deeply racist country. They are the responses of a nation that has long been driven by a determination to move beyond racial differences.

Buttrose needs to do the same.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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