People don’t seem to understand that it isn’t 1830 anymore. You can’t just, “Go west, young man!” Thus I find laws that attempt to limit the options of the homeless far beyond heartless (Which they certainly are!) and all the way to brainless. In 1983, the City of Los Angeles passed a law that stated that no one could use their cars as living quarters. Like most laws, it pretty much laid unenforced until some powerful people decided that had a problem that the law could be used for. The “fine” people of Venice got upset because there were so many homeless people living in their cars. So in 2010, the police started using the law to arrest the homeless and impound their cars—cars, I’m sure, that most of them lost because it is expensive to get your car back.

What exactly it meant tht people were using their cars as living quarters was a matter of debate. In some cases, it simply meant that the police saw food in a car. According to Scott Shackford at Reason Magazine, one woman was arrested after being pulled over. That is to say that she was driving through Venice. So the police decided that the law was so expansive that no one who was living in their car anywhere in the world could even drive in Venice where the rich folks might be offended by the sight of a passing car drivin by one of those people.

Another example sounds like it comes from a modernization of a Dickens novel. A homeless man started sleeping on the sidewalk to comply with the law. You see: it is legal to sleep on the sidewalk. But it started to rain, so he sat in his car to stay dry. The police arrested him and impounded his car. Welcome to America: home of the free (if you’re rich). This 1983 law is nothing more than criminalizing poverty.

I have had the experience of being homeless twice. Once was when I was quite rich. It was just about impossible to find an apartment in Silicon Valley at the height of the dot-com boom. My wife and I had a nice Subaru Outback, but we were still harassed a fair amount. We were never arrested—just told to move along. I’m not at all certain that these instructions were legal, but we’d learned long before that you should not mess with cops. Just as in the case of the 1983 law that was rarely applied until 2010, a cop can always find some excuse to put you in jail and impound your car.

The second time I was homeless, I was very poor. And as a result, I was much more anxious. I moved my car excessively. I never read by flashlight for fear that it would attract attention. And the terrible thing is that there are people (kids mostly) who will terrorize you if they find you living in your car. So you have to worry about everyone. No one is your friend. Eventually, I got a job working in a gas station, so I was able to park there without too much concern. (One of the homeless people in Venice was arrested for living in his car on private property—a church—so you never know.) And then I got a room and within six months I got a high tech job that paid me as much as I’ve ever been paid. I’m a very lucky person because of my background. Most of the people being abused in Venice are not luck; they have no way out.

Despite all of this, the story has a happy ending. A group of homeless plaintiffs took the city to court. A lower court found in favor of the city. Of course! Why not, given that it was just a bunch of homeless people? But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a unanimous decision (by all Democratically appointed judges) found that the law was unconstitutionally vague. As Shackford put it, “[T]he description of what behavior violates the law is so unclear that it was being used by police to (surprise!) harass homeless people who believed they were actually complying with the law.” (I love the parenthetical “surprise!” That’s my kind of libertarian: the kind who knows that the official power will be used to abuse the powerless. Of course, the powerless would fare even worse in a libertarian utopia. But that hardly matter right now.)

The city has decided not to appeal the case. Instead, they are going to craft new legislation that “respects both the rights and needs of homeless individuals and protects the quality of life in our neighborhoods.” I take this to mean, a constitutionally viable way of abusing the homeless. Notice that they are trying to balance the basic needs and rights of the homeless against the “quality of life” of the rich people. Maybe if the rich people don’t want the homeless parking on their streets, they could do something to help the homeless out. No! That would be un-American!

Afterword

My first novel was “Kamping on Asphalt.” It involved a group of people who lived at and around a KOA. I wrote it back in 1998. That picture at the top of the page kind of sums it up, except the novel is kind of a comedy. It was my attempt to write a modern Cannery Row.

I don’t hate Chris Christie because he’s fat. I actually feel sorry for people who are fat. To a large extent, I don’t think they have too much choice. Although I will admit, Christie allowing his weight to get as out of control as it did doesn’t speak especially well of him. But I have the same kinds of tendencies for letting my own life get out of hand. So I understand. But someone like Christie who has such public evidence of his imperfection would cause most people to have a bit of humility. But of course it doesn’t have that effect on Christie.

That’s what gets to the core of why I hate Chris Christie. He’s a jerk. He’s a bully. He’s a guy with lots of power and he abuses it. In my perfect world, we would put people like Chris Christie in jail. All the drug addicts could go on their merries and they could be replaced by people like Chris Christie and Dick Cheney. Well, Cheney should die soon enough—in fact, he should have died a long time ago. Who knows how many people died for lack of healthcare while Cheney has gotten all his extra healthcare that no one deserves—much less a man so directly responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people. But enough about Dick Cheney.

It looks like we may get to see Chris Christie in jail after all. Scott Raab and Lisa Brennan reported today, Exclusive: Prosecutor Is Closing in on Gov Christie. It’s a fun article. It starts by quoting Christie in Utah last Saturday saying, “It’s over, it’s done, and I’m moving on.” That’s good PR, I guess. But with the new information, it sound a bit more like, “You ain’t never gonna get me, copper!”

US Attorney Paul Fishman has been quietly building a number of cases that circle around Christie. Much of it is not especially illegal, just sort of the typical stuff that we know that goes on when a bully is put in charge of anything. And at this point, nothing makes it quite to Christie. But the big news is that Fishman seems to have David Samson. You may remember him as the walking and talking conflict of interest who Christie trusted because he talked to him and Christie just has the power to know when people are telling the truth. Except when he doesn’t. According to one of the authors’ sources, “They’ve got him cold. He got sloppy, arrogant, and greedy.”

It all sounds like typical case building. From David Wildstein and Bridget Kelly, they’ve got Samson. Will Samson rollover on Christie. Well, he’s 74 years old and reported suffers from Parkinson’s disease. If he doesn’t rollover on Christie, he’s going to die in jail. So it’s looking pretty good that we will see Christie in jail. It’s an experience he richly deserves.

I have nothing against Chelsea Clinton. In fact, when she was growing up, I felt a bit sorry for her. The modern right-wing media echo chamber had only just come of age and its hatred of the Clintons went all the way down to the young girl. As I remember it, Rush Limbaugh seemed to take some relish in pontificating about her looks. That’s nothing especially surprising from that well known misogynist, but Clinton was only a young teen at the time—and one who her parents seemed to take care to keep out of the spotlight. So I’m inclined to like her.

But I was less than thrilled when she was hired by NBC News two and a half years ago. It was an especially ironic choice given that her mother had written a syndicated column when the younger Clinton went off to Stanford University (Of course!) asking that journalists leave her alone. But instead of using her history degree to do something useful like write books or teach people or even do original research, she decided to be on air “talent” for Brian Williams’ pathetic Rock Center where she did “serious” reporting like this interview with the Geico gecko:

Now friends, don’t get me wrong. I like fun. But this is a pathetic excuse for what someone who had literally every advantage in life has decided to do with her life. And now, according to Politico, we learn that for the first two years of her time interviewing animated corporate spokes-characters, she was paid $600,000 per year. They recently changed it to a month-to-month contract so I’m gonna guess $50,000 per month. Or is that too low? After all, she doesn’t have the job security that she had before.

Ain’t it great to live in a meritocracy?! Remember when she graduated from Stanford with honors and how that was a big story? Is it genetics? She has two smart parents after all! Or could it have something to do with the fact that she had every advantage growing up; she had the best teachers; and in college, she didn’t have to work one or two jobs?

Of course, NBC News doesn’t come out of this looking rosy either. Remember when they hired Jenna Bush for the Today show? But it is sad that America has an aristocracy that runs around telling us that we don’t have an aristocracy. You can do anything you set your mind to—if your father was President of the United States. And what do you set your mind to? Interview an animated gecko.

Chelsea Clinton by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Speaking of football, Jonathan Bernstein has long been making the argument that the Washington Redskins should change their name simply based on the issue of etiquette. This isn’t to say that there aren’t a whole lot of other issues, but you don’t even need to go there. The Native American community finds the name offensive. It’s as simple as that. So change the name.

Well, today I made the mistake of reading the comments of his most recent iteration of this argument, About That Washington Football Team. Well, apparently he has a troll that has nothing better to do than spout his ignorant opinions hour after hour. He goes by “Elesis” (a female name, but I don’t buy it) and I wouldn’t have even noticed him except that he kept making the same argument again and again and again.

And what an argument it is! Basically, “Sure ‘redskins’ can be a pejorative, but it isn’t a pejorative when the Washington football team uses it!” This is kind of like someone calling you “stupid.” When you complain, they say, “Hey, I know ‘stupid’ is generally a bad thing, but I don’t mean it that way when I refer to you that way!” In fact, here is an actual quote:

This made me think of a line from the film Pulp Fiction. What if Daniel Snyder decided that he wanted to name his team the “Washington Hard Pipe-Hittin’ Niggers”? I mean, in the movie, Marsellus doesn’t say that as a pejorative. He means he’s gonna bring in some hardcore guys who are going to “go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.” I can hardly think of a better name for a football team that is going to open up a can of whoopass every time they hit the field!

By Elesis’ logic, that would be a perfectly fine name for a football team, “Rather than denegrating [!] African Americans, the Hard Pipe-Hittin’ N…..s (or just the N…..s for short) are in fact honoring them.” Why would African Americans have any reason to complain?

The only reason that occurs to me is that it is a totally racist name regardless of what Snyder and Elesis claim. And that’s be just as true of the Redskins as the Pipe-Hitters. So I think we can get rid of the whole idea that “Redskins” is an honorific moniker. I’m still with Bernstein: it’s just a question of etiquette. But obviously, for people like Snyder and Elesis, etiquette doesn’t matter. I think I’ve dispensed with the pejorative and racist arguments. I wonder what they’ll come up with next?!

I noticed something interesting in Dean Baker’s vicious but fair review, Stress Test: The Indictment of Timothy Geithner. It is a long and detailed review going point by point over how Geithner is nothing more than a hired gun for the banks who didn’t didn’t give two bits for actual homeowners or the real economy except in the sense that they might hurt his banker friends. Go read his article, or my discussion, Tim Geithner: Grifter of the Power Elite. But here I am interested in one very small thing.

I’m used to politicians cherry picking whatever data is useful to them. But Geithner is supposed to be an economist—sort of a scientist. I understand that in his book, he would want to present himself in the best possible light. But to be actively deceptive? That goes way beyond what is acceptable. He really is an evil little man.

Geithner provided a graph of housing prices up to 2010 and claimed that it was his policies that caused the rapid drop in prices to stop in 2009 and then start rising. But this was actually a bad thing. The reason the prices of houses stopped falling was because the administration provided an $8,000 new home buyer’s credit. I have friends who used this to be able to buy their first home, and that’s great. But what the policy did on the macro-scale is to create another mini-housing bubble. The truth is that home prices had not yet reached their correct prices.

But you would never know that because Geithner decided to end his graph at 2010. He left out the part of the graph that I’ve shaded in grey when prices when down by about 6.5%. And this is just the overall price of houses. As Bake pointed out, Minneapolis saw a fall of almost 29% and Atlanta saw a fall of almost 52%. So a lot of homeowners got really screwed and Geithner is being extremely deceptive about it:

Now to be fair, after 2012, house prices did finally start to increase. But that doesn’t change the fact that many people paid more for their houses than they should have. And it doesn’t change the fact that Geithner is a liar who will say anything and present data in a totally dishonest way just to make himself look good. But lest we forget: Geithner is part of the power elite. Incompetence and outright villainy are rewarded in the power elite because the power elite are always rewarded no matter what they do. See, for example, Paul Wolfowitz.