The French want in your wallet
Now AIDS is the problem of the developed nations. TO PRESERVE FREEDOM, KEEP AN EYE ON THESE NUTJOBS.
Restlessly seeking the truth for a looooooong time. No BS No PC
Richard LaPlume and Diane Maguire made their way in the dark, searching for an opening in the thick bramble that lined the railroad tracks between Value Village and the Dierbergs Town Center in Shrewsbury.Okay, what did the lawn furniture prove? Could this be a place where neighborhood teens hide to drink beer, smoke, and talk?
A hundred or so yards from the back alley of the grocery store, LaPlume's flashlight ran across a small opening in the brush, illuminating a collection of old, plastic lawn furniture arranged around a small fire pit. "You can tell someone's been staying here," LaPlume said, pointing to the discarded beer and tuna cans littering the area. "Wonder where they are now?"
All across St. Louis County, just out of view from the Starbucks and Krispy Kremes, are similar campsites - temporary homes for those who live on the streets.What?? While we're having lattes and donuts? Where are the locations? The homeless only congregate by Starbucks and Krispy Kremes? Wow, should make it easy to find them.
The people who frequent such places are rarely listed on the rolls of the county's homeless shelters. So on Wednesday night, Community Alternatives Inc., a local nonprofit organization, conducted the county's first ever one-night street count of the homeless.Why aren't they listed? Haven't they ever been to a shelter? Haven't they ever been arrested?
Fifty volunteers and staffers, including LaPlume and Maguire, formed 15 teams. Each was assigned a section of the county to scour. LaPlume and Maguire searched parts of southwest St. Louis County.In other words they didn't find anything or anyone...
It was a long night, beginning around 8 p.m. and ending a little before midnight. The temperature was just above freezing. And the results were, at times, frustrating.
Marilyn Robinson, director of St. Louis County's Department of Human Services, said her agency was waiting on numbers compiled by employees with the county parks system before releasing a total for the street count. She said those numbers should be ready by today. The city of St. Louis also conducted a street count Wednesday, the results of which will not be released until next week.Whoa Gary... 500 to 1500% higher? Makes grubbing for donations easier if the numbers are higher doesn't it?
But according to Community Alternatives Executive Director Gary Morse, the total reached in the county Wednesday was much lower than the actual number of homeless in the area.
"If what you wanted to do was get a homeless count that was low, this was the way to do it," Morse said. "It was one night in the coldest month of the year. The true number is probably closer to five to 15 times as many as we counted."
Wednesday's count was a part of a nationwide push to resolve the problems of the homeless, inspired by President George W. Bush's announced goal of ending chronic homelessness by 2012.Okay, the President wants a six year plan ("goal of ending chronic homelessness by 2012". Any Idea why the County wants a 10-year Plan? Maybe because the whole "homeless" issue is a crock?
St. Louis County is one of more than 170 counties and cities nationwide taking part in the count, most of them scheduled for the end of January.
County officials plan to use the information collected to help formulate a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will collect street count totals from across the country, adding them to existing shelter counts in an effort to get a clear picture of the country's homeless population. According to the latest HUD numbers, there are roughly 700,000 homeless people across the country on any given night and more than 3 million over the course of a year.Well, here's the weenie of this story -- "tied future grant funding to the completion of single-night street counts". Oh oh. Now local officials are forced to be ACCOUNTABLE to get FEDERAL FUNDS. I hope the Feds audit the counts carefully. If they find "inconsistencies" the people who cause them should be put in irons. By the way, if this story describes an OFFICIAL street count, why is the county using volunteers who are not accountable to anything, other than inflating the problem so they feel good, or get more funding.
HUD officials said their numbers were out of date and not terribly accurate, which is why the agency has tied future grant funding to the completion of single-night street counts every two years.
"In order to build a strategy to take on such a big problem, you've got to know the problem," said Brian Sullivan, HUD spokesman. "This count will, in the end, answer some fundamental questions about homelessness."Yep it is going to answer some fundamental questions... Like how big is this problem, really? The second paragraph is raising my BS meter to high levels? I can understand that you may not have the manpower, but the homeless moving in one day? How many would be on the move? Will they be invisible as they move? Can we paint them a distinguishing color so we don't double count them as they move?
But according to Morse, by forcing agencies to do the count in just one day, HUD is severely limiting their ability to be thorough. Homeless people are always on the move, sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity.
It's illegal to be homeless in St. Louis County. Once a homeless person has been spotted, he or she usually has to find somewhere new to sleep for the night.Okay, a variety of methods, over a longer period of time. What methods, and how long a period, and who conducted the counts?
St. Louis County's last street count, which found 366 homeless people outside the shelter system, was conducted in 2002 and used a variety of methods over a longer period of time to arrive at a total.
Morse said a similar approach this time would have yielded more accurate totals.
After 3 1/2 hours of searching Wednesday night, after climbing into creek beds and checking every highway underpass, Maguire and LaPlume had found the telltale signs of homelessness a dozen times over. They had found, however, only one homeless person: Hiram Short III, 45, a San Francisco native who has been living on the streets in the county for nearly a year.Damn, these folks are quick. They checked "every highway underpass" from Shrewsbury to Fenton in 3 1/2 hours. Bull.... Bull.... Bull..... (for my readers outside the St. Louis Area, or unfamiliar, I'll estimate the mileage between Fenton and Shrewsbury to be about 5 miles. These two covered 25 square miles in 3 1/2 hours. Wow!) By the way, give ole Hiram a bus ticket to Frisco, they love bums there. (But if you have a dog, the city will inspect your dog house and fine you if it is substandard). Also BTW, does the owner of the Steak N' Shake know that he is running a homeless shelter?
Maguire and LaPlume encountered Short at the Steak 'n Shake at Interstate 44 and Highway 141.
On cold nights, Short is allowed to sleep inside the all-night eatery, a courtesy that has probably kept him alive more than once this winter.
Maguire and Plume listened as Short told them of his circumstances. They gave him a package that contained gloves and socks and clean underwear. Then they took down his information and started back to Community Alternatives headquarters, a little disappointed.
"I know there are a lot more like Hiram out there," Maguire said. "We just couldn't find them tonight."
Reporter Clay Barbour
E-mail: cbarbour@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-727-6234
We could probably think of hundreds of jobs that either don't exist or exist in far fewer numbers than in the past -- jobs such as elevator operator, TV repairman and coal deliveryman. "Creative destruction" is a discovery process where we find ways to produce goods and services more cheaply. That in turn makes us all richer.
...
That same principle applies when it's outsourcing serving as the engine for creative destruction. Daniel W. Drezner, assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago, discusses outsourcing in "The Outsourcing Bogeyman" (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004). Professor Drezner reports that for every dollar spent on outsourcing to India, the United States reaps between $1.12 and $1.14 in benefits. Why? U.S. firms save money and become more profitable, benefiting shareholders and increasing returns on investment. In the process, U.S. workers are reallocated to more competitive, mostly better-paying jobs.
Drezner also points out that large software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle have increased outsourcing and used the savings for investment and larger domestic payrolls. Nationally, 70,000 computer programmers lost their jobs between 1999 and 2003, but more than 115,000 computer software engineers found higher-paying jobs during that same period. By the way, when outsourcing doesn't work, companies backtrack, as have Dell and Lehman Brothers, which have moved some of their call centers back to the United States from India because of customer complaints.
"To begin with, the idealists are right about the possibility for freedom and democracy to spread across borders and cultures. In 1775 there were no democracies. Then came the American Revolution and raised the number to one. Some 230 years later there are 117, accounting for 61% of the world's governments."
Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, men aren’t avoiding highly accomplished women. We’re avoiding highly accomplished women like you.
Mr. Carson was often called the ``king of late night,'' and he wielded an almost regal power. Beyond his enormous impact on popular culture, Mr. Carson more than any other individual shifted the nexus of power in television from New York to Los Angeles, with his decision in 1972 to move his show from its base in Rockefeller Center in New York to NBC's West Coast studios in Burbank, Calif. That same move was critical in the changeover of much of television from live to taped performances.
Over the three decades, Mr. Carson impaled the foibles of seven presidents and their aides, as well as the doings of assorted nabobs and stuffed shirts from the private sector: corporate footpads and secret polluters, tax evaders, preening lawyers, idiosyncratic doctors, oily accountants, defendants who got off too easily and celebrities who talked too much.
Reason #4556549887 to keep moonbat liberals OUT of the educational system. Read and see how they destroyed math scores for one small town with one itsy, bitsy little policy change. Where, you ask? Why Massachusetts of course.
"He still has plenty of proposals for domestic policy left in him. These range from making permanent tax cuts that were passed in his opening term and the partial privatisation of American pensions to his ambition to curtail the outrageous costs of the US legal system. His new Cabinet members are not noticeably weaker than his previous colleagues. His party runs each branch of Congress and, thanks to the November election results, with greater majorities. For the first time since 1937 a re-elected president who has been in Washington for four years starts again with congressional enhancement, not erosion"
We heard from that tired old Social Democrat Ted Kennedy again yesterday. Ted Kennedy. The man who never had to struggle to pay a bill in his entire life. The man who has never held an actual job. The man who wandered up and down a deserted seaside road worrying about his political career while a young woman (his girlfriend?) suffocated in the back seat of a car in just over four feet of water. Yeah ... that Ted Kennedy. Well .. there he was yesterday engaging in his usual hyper-leftist over-the-top liberalism. Mr. Cradle-to-Grave government care. Mr. Womb-to-Tomb health care. The man who thinks that America is great because of its government.
Kennedy was telling us (again) yesterday that Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam. In making that statement there is not one bit of doubt in my mind that Ted Kennedy gave virtual aid and comfort to Islamic insurgents in Iraq and to Islamofascist terrorists around the world. There is no doubt in my mind that Kennedy's statement yesterday so encouraged and emboldened the insurgency in Iraq that American servicemen will die as a result. Ted Kennedy doesn't seem to be satisfied with the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, he wants more .. or so it seems. If Ted Kennedy cut a notch in his bed for every death of an American serviceman or woman at the hands of an Iraqi insurgent encouraged by his remarks, and by leftist opposition to the liberation of the people of Iraq, he would be sleeping in sawdust.
In this selfish world which so often seems dominated by various stingy undertaxed global military hyperpowers, I am proud to say that the United Nations still adheres to the simple, elegant wisdom of my snowy Fnærkjbørgěner townfolk: where ever and whenever tragedy strikes, the world can count on the UN to bring the lingonberries of hope.
"Ms. Dowd refers to two studies. One suggests that men would rather marry their subordinates than their supervisors. (Note: The study said 'subordinates or equals', but that doesn't support Dowd's point.) The other study states that the higher a woman's I.Q. is, the lower her marriage prospects are. Ms. Dowd's implied attitude that she is incredibly smart and successful may be one reason some accomplished women aren't finding mates. Conceited people just aren't lovable."
"The MSM rose because it had a monopoly on information. The networks, newspapers and magazines were a Liberal Monolith. In one of his 'Making of the President' books the liberal but ingenuous Teddy White famously said of 57th Street in Manhattan that when he stood there he was within a stone's throw of all the offices in which all of American media was busily churning out its vision of The News. Churning it out were a relatively small group of a few hundred liberals who worked and mostly lived on an island off the continent; they told that continent not only what it should be thinking about but how it should be thinking of it. (I think the New York Times unconsciously echoes this old assumption in their television commercials in which an earnest, graying, upscale dunderhead says the New York Times surrounds a story and gives him new ways to think about it. Doesn't it just?)"
"The Paris Club (consisting of sovereign creditors from Russia, the U.S., Western Europe and Japan) has already agreed to an 80% write-down of nearly $40 billion of debt. Another $50 billion was lent by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council comprised of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Bahrain. The two largest creditors, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have signaled that they will enter debt restructuring negotiations in the near future, the UAE and Qatar announced they plan to forgive the bulk of $7 billion owed their countries. In all likelihood, $80 billion to $90 billion of Iraq's total debt will eventually be forgiven. This good news is already being reflected in these markets."
"People now get their news and opinion on the Internet and relay it to talk radio. They then think about it, research it further, and discuss it on the Internet, in email, and in the national conversations that take place on shows like mine all the time,shows that cannot simply be marginalized as 'right wing radio', because they are not 'right wing'. Some are, in part, national dialogues. Yes there is right wing radio, and yes there is left wing radio but there is radio of another sort too, and too few elites have the first clue about what it is or what is happening there. "
"After the election, many statistics emerged. Perhaps the most interesting do not have to do with the mere shifts in the Catholic, Jewish, Black, or Hispanic votes. But, rather, why those shifts took place. Those shifts took place in part because of these statistics from the Pew Research Center: 41% voters say they got at least some of their news about the 2004 election online. Further, 21% relied on the Internet for most of their election news, nearly double the number in 2000. Yes, people cared about something more than job losses (as Ohio, which may have lost more jobs than any other state in the last four years, proved) but the information about the context of the job losses, as well as the something more, came from places other than the mainstream media."
But consider the source of these attacks.
These are the same groups who claim that your civil rights are being violated whenever a public-school teacher recites the Pledge of Allegiance, a county clerk issues a wedding license only to the union of one man and one woman, or a soldier allows a Boy Scout troop onto a military base.
These are the same groups that seek judges who will ignore the three-strikes-and-you're-out law when sentencing convicted criminals, invalidate consensus laws like the partial-birth-abortion ban, and block school-choice programs designed to expand educational opportunities to minority communities.
The only means by which liberals could ever hope to resume a dominant role in American politics would be to honestly promote their ideas in a manner that might persuade the population at large. But big government socialism and its corollary, societal decay, simply won’t resonate with an America that cherishes its traditional heritage of liberty, individuality, and morality.
Recent attempts by the left to assume the moral “high ground” in response to the devastation in the Indian Ocean, while generating much anger and resentment, are neither persuading the American people of liberalism’s inherent superiority nor convincing them of the righteous benevolence of liberalism’s supreme shrine, the United Nations.
"Yes, I decided, the UNocrats are great hideous vultures, roused from their caves in the European Alps and in the cement canyons and peaks of Manhattan by the stench of death in the Turd World. They leisurely take flight toward the smell of death; circle, and then swoop down, screeching UNintelligble nonsense. They arrive and immediately force others, e.g., the American tax payer, to build them new exclusive nests in the midst of poverty, and make themselves fat on the flesh of the dead. My friends, allow The Diplomad to present to you The High Priest Vulture Elite (HPVE)."
"The fundamental question here is whether CBS was the victim of a hoax, or the perpetrator of a hoax. It has been our view for a long time that Rather and his colleagues were perpetrators, not victims, in part because the documents were such obvious fakes that it strains credulity to suppose that they were actually fooled. When you read the Thornburgy/Boccardi report, keep that question constantly in mind: victim, or perpetrator?"
The UN is a dysfunctional gaggle of anti-American pampered bureaucrats who have routinely and chronically mucked up any and all projects over which they assume control.
Yeah, it IS another effort to undermine the UN kinda like the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) which accomplished more to stem the tide of nuclear weapons proliferation in six to nine months than the UN has in half a century. Building up(which translates to throwing money at the UN) is like feeding crack cocaine to the NBA.
"The final tally, the grand total of those killed in the Marxist-Leninist war of class genocide against private property, individuality, profit and the market, is variously estimated at between 80 million and 110 million, with as many as 65 million in China, 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on.
...with a grand total of millions of victims, one would suppose that the remaining true believers in the socialist camp might be a little shy or unsure in calling for yet another round of centralized planning and great leaps forward.
Such, however, is not the case, as evidenced by the call for grandiose state intrusion in the most private of matters in the November-December 2004 issue of the Internationalist Socialist Review. The crisis described in America is that of an escalating "class attack" by the bourgeoisie in which "more and more responsibility for children's welfare has been placed on individual families."