Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Monday, April 21, 2025

The Homeless

 I only sometimes agree with Erik Loomis about stuff - he's sort of an old school labor lefty with some...strident takes - but he's oddly moderate on San Jose's homelessness program. The basic contours of  the program begins with "it is not OK to be voluntarily homeless." That means arrests and mandatory housing. His moderation on this is likely because he's lived in the Pacific Northwest with all of their homeless issues. 

It's striking that he posted this the same day Pope Francis died. Francis was not perfect, he had some of the oddball Catholic ideas surrounding families that are probably to be expected from a priesthood unable to marry. (As an aside, the concept of papal infallibility is really, really strange in the 21st century. The Pope is basically the last meaningful monarch.)

Francis was focused on re-centering the poor in the mission of the Catholic Church. We have a homeless problem in our country, and we have untaxed mega-churches who do almost nothing to contribute to solutions to this problem.

No comments: