Communist and totalitarians are enemies of the free state. Unfortunately, new cults with old ideology have been formed and we are cracking at our foundation.
A 10 point plan.
1. Assess mental competence. If rational then route to the legal system, jail etc. Reduce penalties for reaching treatment or self sufficiency goals.
2. If mentally unfit then route to medical system for treatment. If treatment is refused then into the legal system. Once mentally stable, work out long term plans.
3. Restrict, discourage, actively make it difficult to acquire or use of hard drugs. End all "Harm Reduction" programs. Financally incentivise sobriety by testing and rewarding staying clean. (it's cheaper in the long run)
4. Discourage and end programs that supply tents and supplies. Make it a misdemeanor to give out or "dump" used clothing/household goods under the guise of "helping".
5. Provide "Meals on Wheels" to keep nutrition available.
6. End "Outreach" programs. Homeless only have two routes medical or legal.
7. End "passing the buck" between non-profits, local, state and federal agencies. Homelessness is a City level problem that requires funding from the State and Feds. No more non-profits.
8. We as a society need to accept that we have a large population of current people that we will need to take care of via, hospitals and supervisied housing for the next 50 years. These people are unable to care for themselves and most will never be able to hold a job or be responsible for housing.
9. Work on prevention with Vocational education, early learning of life skills, re-designing our school system. (a much larger conversation)
10. Employ, "Tough Love" make living on the streets harder than going into treatments.
Thomas Sowell gets it: He's 94 years old and has never held political office, never had a viral moment, never begged for your attention. He just wrote 30 books, spent 50 years dismantling bad ideas with data, and let the work speak. No green room. No cable news contract. No ideology to sell you. While academics were chasing grants and politicians were chasing polls, Sowell was in the library proving them all wrong. The most dangerous intellectual in America isn't the loudest one. It's the one who doesn't need you to agree with him.
The Senate, without a formal vote, effectively through the House under the bus. What a bunch of cowards. They should have been mandated to have a vote, not scam it through with the consent agenda. Consent agendas were created for routine business not passing important, controversial legislation. The House gets the luxury of screwing over spring break travel or gambling on a future bill. No wonder why we can't get the Save America Act passed.
What is the penalty if a student walks out? Detention, suspension or at a minimum an unexcused absence? Without a penalty (paying the price) the walkout is meaningless and just an excuse for ditching class. This does more damage than good to the students in that it supports entitlement for some and a false sense of security for others. Students need to know that standing up for your beliefs has a real cost to pay and that spouting others BS just makes you canon fodder.
@Salem_Statesman Headline should read: "In an 11 to 7 virtue signaling vote, Salem city council creates a "Welfare Tourism Fund". City taxpayers ask WTF?"
"Parking in the wrong place" is pure gaslighting on your part trying to justify your support of policies that promote fraud, mental illness and death. She was there to interfere and impede armed law enforcement resulting in her paying the price for the brainwashing that you politically and financially support. The blood is on your hands homie.
As someone who experienced the “warmth of collectivism” firsthand as a child, because Russian colonisers brought communism and collectivism to my very individualistic country, let’s dig into what that “warmth” actually looked like.
1. A flat or house to live in. You literally couldn’t buy one. That simply wasn’t an option. You waited for years to get housing assigned by the state. And you can already imagine the quality: quickly built blocks, or the confiscated apartments of “enemies of the people” who were shot or sent to the Gulag. The party elite got the good places. Ordinary people got a cheap Khrushchyovka with a tiny kitchen and no lift after 5–10 years of waiting. No other option.
2. Your job “for life” (whether you wanted it or not). Officially, everyone had work. In practice, you didn’t choose a career so much as you were placed into one. Want to switch? Good luck. Want to start a business? Cute. Private enterprise was either illegal, punished, or pushed into shady “don’t ask, don’t tell” territory.
3. Travel? Not for you. You couldn’t just decide to go somewhere, even within the “friendly” socialist world, without permissions. The border wasn’t a line on a map, it was a wall in your head. Want to see the West? That wasn’t a holiday plan, that was a crime plot.
4. Information was “collective” too. One TV truth, one newspaper truth, one approved version of reality. If your eyes disagreed, your eyes were “wrong.” And if you repeated what you saw out loud, you could become a “problem.”
5. The “warmth” came with a price: fear. You learned early what not to say, to whom, and where. You learned that walls had ears, and sometimes so did classmates. Collectivism works best when everyone self-censors.
6. Queues: the national sport. Food, shoes, furniture, books, washing machines, a decent winter coat. You stood in line because “they might bring something.” Planning your life around rumours about deliveries isn’t community. It’s scarcity management.
7. Quality didn’t matter, because choice didn’t exist. When there’s only one type of sausage, it doesn’t have to be good. When there’s only one brand of anything, the producer doesn’t compete for you. You compete for the product.
8. Equality was a slogan, not a reality. Officially, everyone was equal. Unofficially, some were “more equal,” and their equality came with better housing, better shops, better doctors, and better futures.
9. Collective responsibility meant individual guilt. One person messes up, everyone gets punished. One person speaks out, everyone gets threatened. It trains people to police each other, not support each other.
And the punchline: they still called it “care.” Not because it was caring, but because calling it care made it harder to argue with.
Tallinn occupied buy Societs.
@Oregonian There is no "Forced". They had options and choices. They made the choice to leave their daughter behind with relatives. The only people being "Forced" is the taxpayers of Oregon that are going to be responsible for taking care of their child.
@Salem_Statesman Fixed the Headline for you: "Thousands" of unemployed protesters over the age of 60 struggle to stand and hold signs for two hours at the Oregon state capital.
Neither Woke Left nor Woke Right understand "all men are created equal"—and misunderstand it ON PURPOSE to justify treating people unequally under their own Woke misunderstandings of the world. They're both totally off-base because Woke is never based.
@ThomasSowell Milton was wrong on this one. Drugs kill extreamly slowly. In reality, they degrade the quality of live of the non-users lives while the users avoid any responsibility by exploiting our moral fiber to gain resources to obtain more drugs until the end. This cycle can take years.