Time to deploy the soapbox. Sound the alarms!

For days I've been hearing bits of phone conversation from my supervisor mentioning Barack Obama. It was starting to make me wonder if he was coming here, which means I would have to make sure I was well away from this place before the ensuing media circus pitched their tent and readied the sideshow. It turns out he won't be visiting here (as in my actual workplace), but will instead be having a town hall gathering at one of the high schools nearby to discuss his economic plan. They're giving away tickets tonight at the campaign office downtown. I think I'll pass. Personally, I'd rather not get another "stimulus" check, which is central to Obama's economy platform. Why? Because it's just like getting tax return - this money was paid to the government from me - and every other tax paying citizen - in good faith, and it just serves to remind me every time how much of my pay actually goes towards politically motivated programs, initiatives, and projects with little to no redemptive value. This isn't the government doing me a favor. This is them giving me back my money before they have time to waste and squander it. I would have been better off not having to pay it out to them in the first place.

As part of the impending local visit by a potential president, the city has again decided to come down hard on the local homeless population. While I find the increase in pandhandling that has become a serious problem in the last couple of years a minor annoyance (they're on the medians of all of the major roads and every interstate off ramp, and I'm starting to see them clustered in packs as well) , true homelessness in this city is, for the most part, an "invisible problem". The Mayor, in his infinite wisdom (<-- sarcasm), instead of acknowleding the issue and using city resources to fund services - shelters, rehabilitation, employment assistance - just approves statutes and codes that push the homeless more and more into the fringes, or out of the industrial areas and into the middle class 'burbs, continually causing a sort of social discord and class warfare. When the movement began to "gentrify" downtown with these million dollar condos pandering to an upscale yuppy lifestyle, a number of services and facilities for the indigent, the mentally ill, and those with drug and alcohol problems, were lost in the development crush. Now the city is threatening to kick a group of homeless out of an overpass area, and to have code enforcement - assisted by police - remove their meager posessions (that will then have to be claimed from city storage within 30 days...somehow.). See, I have a problem with this mainly because there are limited shelter services within the city limits and, no matter what happens, the poor are always on the losing end of the deal. People will find whatever safe place to sleep that they can, aesthetics and right of ways be damned.

Continually forcing the homeless from one area to another absolutely does not solve the problem - it doesn't even begin to address what the root of the problem is. Employing code enforcement and law enforcement personnel to evict the poor from public areas and confiscate their worldy goods is an incredible waste of the city's time and money. We have actual crimes being committed daily. My next door neighbor's house is disappearing behind a mountain of piled up newspapers and boxes, and I haven't seen a code enforcement officer in my neighborhood for months. These city employees have so much better things to do than "clean up" a small group of people minding their own business because the city leaders are afraid that Barack Obama might see that not everything in this town is booming. I hope he doesn't decide that as part of his campaign stop here he wants to visit Bennigan's for a delicious Monte Cristo sandwich.