Odyessy Program Enrollment Begins October 2!!!!

the Campus For Human Development's widely respected and highly sought after Odyessy Program has their enrollment period coming up. 

If you know anyone who might be interested in entering this program, NOW is the time to get them to the Campus for orientation:

(click on image to enlarge)

 

"A program that keeps homeless people out of jail for petty crimes has saved Tucson $3.8 million in jail costs since 2000"

Nashville has a mental health court and it works fairly well.  I'm not certain that anyone has tracked overall savings to the city as a result of moving people through this court versus traditional court, but anytime we can provide alternatives to jail we almost always save money.  

That may change, however.  In a recent conversation I had with Commander Damian Huggins from Metro PD, he argued that jail sentences ought to be longer rather than shorter in order to assist in the detoxing and referral of individuals to appropriate agencies.  He believes that because our current laws have no real deterrent effect, we must find a way to hold folks longer in order for them to sober up and receive treatment.

Judge Eisenstein had about the best idea yet for those convicted of drug and alcohol-related offenses; a stay at the Guest House with drug and alcohol counseling under threat of incarceration if they leave before they've completed their time.  

I don't believe that "gunbarrel rehab" works very well; anecdotally speaking, I can tell you it never worked for me.  Let me give you another example of just how powerful addiction is:

Leeann is a 26 year old female who is addicted to narcotic painkillers.  She's done a real number on her family while feeding this addiction, stealing over $50,000 from her grandparents and forcing them to lose their home, destroying her parent's relationship and seriously damaging her mother's second marriage, and alienating her brothers, sisters and extended family.  She has prostituted for her dope money, has contracted Hep C and who knows what else, and has been beaten, raped, stabbed and beaten some more.  

She came to me about two months ago looking for some help.  I worked with her mother to get her into a methadone treatment facility but on the day she was to begin the program, her family decided they simply could not afford the $360 a month it would cost to put her into the program.  

Leeann was on her way to a very wicked "sick" as she'd run out of Diluadid the day before.  When she heard that mom wasn't going to bail her out, she decided to try a "booze kick."  Booze doesn't work to stop the withdrawals and frankly, it adds to the overall misery factor by creating another form of sickness within the body the following day. 

Regardless, the desperation to stop the physical withdrawal symptoms was and is so great that Leeann went to a local bar and began drinking.  

After several hours she was 86'd from the bar and began walking drunkenly down a very busy street here in Nashville.  Within minutes she was struck by a speeding car, sending her into oncoming traffic where she was hit again.

Her injuries were substantial and damned near killed her.  The Doctor stated that if she hadn't been drunk she almost certainly would have been killed but the alcohol caused her to fly and land like a rag doll, lessening the extent of her injuries.

She spent about two weeks in a coma at a local hospital and was detoxed from her narcotic addiction as she lay unconscious.  

After she awakened, she was, according to her mother, a "completely different person." She swore off drugs, wanted to get her life back on track and began attending church.

Upon being discharged from the hospital, the physician prescribed her Lortab - yes, you read that right, LORTAB - a narcotic pain killer that is so abused by us dopefiends that only a complete idiot would even consider giving a single tablet to any of us.  

Leeann went home to her mothers - the first time she'd been allowed back into the house since she burned her grandparents for their entire retirement savings - and within two days had a huge fight with her mother's husband over her Lortabs.  

She ended up back on the street and we intervened, securing her a place in a local rehab facility.  

She was set to obtain housing tomorrow and I called to notify the fine folks at this agency that I would be coming to pick her up in order to take her to her new residence tomorrow at 1pm.  

The nurse at the agency told me, " Ms. Doe is no longer here.  She had an altercation with another resident on Saturday, left the facility and returned three hours later in a car, obviously intoxicated and waving two '40s' out the window while screaming obscenities at the staff and residents." 

If being almost killed because you were too drunk to watch where you were walking doesn't break you of your addiction, I seriously doubt it will matter whether you spend two days, two weeks, two months or two years behind bars.....

Tucson saves money by not locking up some homeless

Reported by: Associated Press Last Update: 9/29 5:14 am

 

A program that keeps homeless people out of jail for petty crimes has saved Tucson $3.8 million in jail costs since 2000, a city official said.

Tucson city Magistrate Michael Lex told caseworkers and others who work with the homeless how the program works during the Tucson Planning Council for the Homeless annual conference last month.

Lex created what he said was Arizona's first mental health court to help the homeless get services to help them avoid arrests and jail time.

The city court's homeless program has resulted in 31,777 charges dismissed since the program began in 2000.

Those charges represent 13,363 court dockets and nearly 6,000 individuals whose charges were thrown out after they completed a diversion program tailored to their needs.

Lex said sending homeless people to jail over and over again for petty crimes like urinating in public, trespassing and panhandling amounts to a life term on the installment plan. "It just doesn't work," he said.

After seeing the same people over and over again, Lex said he realized the mentally ill were very poorly served by the (criminal justice) system.

"I went into the church on two occasions and stole money because I have a very bad drug habit"

Even after seeing all that I have after spending some 30 years living on - or damned close to - the street, I'm still shocked when I hear about folks ripping off churches.  It's strange too, because I don't have a whole lot of respect for most churches; I always feel that if they were truly concerned with "the word of God" they'd spend a whole lot less on their fancy buildings and spend a whole lot more assisting their less fortunate congregation members.   

Nashville's area churches have helped dispel this view somewhat.  Frankly if it wasn't for local churches, the homeless in our city would be in a helluva lot worse shape, that you can believe.....

A 12-STEP CHURCH 'ROB'

By TOM LIDDY and JOHN DOYLE

Posted: 4:03 am
September 30, 2008

In addition to trying to clean up his act at some Staten Island churches, he was also trying to clean them out.
Lonnie Faulk, a homeless ex-con, attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at several of the houses of worship not only to get treatment but also so that he could case them before ripping them off, authorities said.
Faulk, 42, was arrested Saturday and charged with 13 burglaries at 10 churches, the DA's office said. He admitted to the thefts, they said.

The last church he allegedly hit was the First Central Baptist in the Stapleton section, where he used a screwdriver to break a basement window and steal $70 in contributions from worshippers.

He was spotted at the scene walking away, and the cops were called and nabbed him, authorities said.
"I went into the church on two occasions and stole money because I have a very bad drug habit," he told cops.

Faulk, who spent December and January at Rikers Island on drug charges, had allegedly hit the church once before in August.

"They were urinating and taking dumps and stuff"

What's most disheartening about this piece is not the fact that people use the bridge as a toilet; people have to pee and poop, period.  In fact, the last time I went to a Titan's game (9/21/08) I saw a woman change a baby and throw a poop-filled (to overflowing...yecchh) diaper behind one of the stones and a man whizzing behind a trash can in one of the cutouts. Neither appeared homeless to me and while I know you can't always judge a book by its cover, it's a safe bet to assume these were revelers at the Titans game rather than folks looking for a place to lay their heads each night.

No, what's most disheartening is that in a city with just two public bathrooms, one at the Library, the other at Fort Nashboro, city officials order "quality of life crackdowns" instead of installing a couple of porta potties...

Titans Fans Tackle Foul Odors On Shelby Street Bridge

Posted: Sep 28, 2008 08:47 PM

Video Gallery <1> Titans Fans Tackle Foul Odors On Shelby Street Bridge 1:59

Fans cross Shelby Street Bridge downtown Nashville on the way to Titans game, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-   The smells and stains of the Shelby Street Bridge are not too pretty. Now Metro police are left to clean up the problem.

"We always usually come down here about 9:00, 10:00 and start getting ready for the games," said Titans fan, Brennan Swing.

For Swing and his buddies, the brats, burgers, and bar-b-que have been a bit sweeter this year thanks to a good start by the Titans.

"It's just been a lot more people downtown for the games. It's staring to get back to that 99 feeling when everybody was so excited about the Titans, so it's pretty cool," said Swing.

What's no so cool is what many fans encountered on the way to Sunday's game. Any way you describe it, people crossing the Shelby Street Bridge got a nose full. It's become so much of an issue, Metro police have now begun quality of life patrols on the bridge.

"Every once in a while we have to sleep up there cause we have no where else to go," said homeless man, Bill Hill.

Hill says he knows the finger is being pointed at the homeless, many of whom sleep on or under the bridge at night. He admits some simply aren't concerned with the upkeep of the pedestrian bridge.

"They were urinating and taking dumps and stuff," Hill said.

He describes the worse spot as the elevator: tight, cramped, and damp.
"You can't hardly ride in that elevator cause it stays hot and it smells like pee. It always does," said Hill.

People who love in the area are certainly hopeful the continued checks will deter these types of problems.
"I think it's good. They need to make sure that our facilities, our public facilities are clean. There's no reason to let it run rampant," said Swing.

Since they've begun the quality checks, Metro police say they've made a number of arrests.
Their plan is to work to keep the bridge beautiful for all residents and visitors of the Music City.

"...how it is that there is no money for health care, education, housing and real jobs for poor people, but there are trillions for state-sponsored corporate bailouts and tax breaks for the rich?"

Nuff asked.

Doubt we'll ever get an answer, tho.....

Money for a Wall Street bailout, but not for the poor

Friday, September 26th 2008, 8:20 PM

The mad rush in Washington to approve a $700 billion bailout of the Wall Street firms largely responsible for the nation's economic crisis in the first place may sound like a very bad joke.

Of course it isn't, and by now we all know that it is no laughing matter. And as City Hall has already made clear, New Yorkers will have to pay a very high price.

"We're going to have some tough times," Mayor Bloomberg said on Tuesday. He was referring to the $516 million budget reduction he ordered for this fiscal year to be followed by a $1 billion reduction for the next one. The Wall Street crisis made these cuts unavoidable, the mayor explained.

Bloomberg is a billionaire and should have no problem personally sailing through the troubled financial waters ahead. For his constituents, however, that voyage is bound to be anything but smooth.

Most are working men and women (and increasingly the unemployed) who struggle daily to make ends meet in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Not surprisingly, the most vulnerable New Yorkers - low-income families, senior citizens, the poor - will bear the brunt of the cuts. The homeless - including 7,822 families with children - will be among the hardest hit.
Advocates and homeless activists are not taking this well, and are asking some tough questions.

"When poor and homeless people ask the government for help, they're told that low-income housing and living wage jobs are not a government priority because this country is built on 'personal responsibility' and people need to 'make better decisions,'" said a written statement by Picture the Homeless, a nonprofit organization founded and led by homeless people in New York.

"[But] when giant banking corporations are on the brink of total collapse because they have made a systematic series of bad business decisions the government gives them a trillion dollars," the statement continued. "Where is the 'personal responsibility' for the rich?"

That is a question that begs for an honest answer, especially after the Wall Street debacle.

It should be noted that Mayor Bloomberg has not closed his eyes to the plight of the thousands of New Yorkers who do not have a place to live. City Councilman Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Council's General Welfare committee, gives him credit for being "gutsy" in setting the goal of reducing the homeless population 66% by 2009, as part of his five-year plan to combat homelessness announced in 2004.
"It was a bold move," he said.

But the plan has not been a success, and last Tuesday De Blasio held a General Welfare committee hearing to review its progress. Robert Hess, the city Commissioner of Homeless Services, was one of those who testified.

"I found a fair amount of denial from Commissioner Hess," De Blasio said after the hearing. "I would've appreciated if he had been more forthcoming. But there was a lot of 'happy talk' even though there is almost no change in the number of homeless people."

At the hearing, De Blasio presented an innovative five-step plan (in which homelessness prevention plays a big part) to help achieve the mayor's goals. Yet, for all its merits, the future of de Blasio's plan is in doubt due to the crisis.

"I am worried about the budget cuts," he said. "Once you have a fiscal crisis, pro-active solutions tend to fall by the wayside."

Which brings us back to another one of those pesky questions the members of Picture the Homeless are asking.

They would like to know how it is that there is no money for health care, education, housing and real jobs for poor people, but there are trillions for state-sponsored corporate bailouts and tax breaks for the rich.
How indeed?

aruiz@nydailynews.com

"...consumers also are delaying purchases of big-ticket items like washers, dryers and refrigerators. That's starting to hurt state sales tax collections"

Speaking of watching, waiting and worrying, has anyone noticed how many "for sale" and "for rent" signs are up in the Radnor Lake subdivisions?  Man, those are some beautiful homes over there, but I was shocked to see so much inventory!  

The other shocker was seeing so many Obama/Biden signs in yards; seems to me the last time I was in that area during an election it was nothing but a sea of Bush/Cheney placards.  I wonder how many of those old Geedub supporters would even admit today that they supported the Bush/Cheney ticket.  From the looks of things, it's going to be a much different outcome this time around, unless of course some big "October surprise" comes down the pike for either candidate.

Nashville businesses watch, wait

Wall Street uncertainty has operators hoping for upturn, bracing for worse

By GETAHN WARD • Staff Writer • September 29, 2008

Nashville-area small-business leaders remain wary of the week ahead on Wall Street — keeping a tight lid on hiring and a watchful eye on the Dow Jones stock ticker as a sign of whether consumer confidence bounces back.

Over the past year, Stewart Building Supply has had to let go about 40 percent of its work force, said Bill Stewart, president of the company, reflecting weaker demand for products such as windows, roofing, siding and lumber that it sells to homebuilders across Middle Tennessee. That's because construction of single-family homes in the Nashville area is limping along at less than half the pace of a year ago.

"They've got to get the financial problems worked out first before they start building homes," Stewart said, referring to banks and other commercial lenders who deal with builders.

Longtime real estate agent Shirley Zeitlin said business is slower than last year. But she has still managed to add offices and agents and update her company's advertising materials and brand. "You can't stick your head in the sand," she said. "You have to take a slowdown as an opportunity to position yourself for the future."
Uncertainty in the credit markets and overall U.S. economy has made Pamela Little's task of developing next year's marketing plans and budget for her company more difficult. She's director of sales and marketing for Cooper Hotel Properties, which operates five Doubletree hotels in the state.

Little said she's been hoping politicians in Washington take steps to cure the ailing U.S. economy. The hotel industry has already felt the ill effects of rising fuel costs, and it's bracing for more flight cutbacks by financially strapped airlines that could keep potential guests grounded in the months to come.

"We have to have some type of (financial) plan because people currently are in a state of panic," Little said, referring to efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to solve the latest Wall Street crisis. "They have to take decisive action. Until that time, we're going to be in a state of flux and people are going to be very conservative in their spending."

Jim Tracy, owner of an insurance agency that bears his name in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro, worries about the ripple effects if Congress doesn't manage to salve the wounds of the nation's financial markets.
He sees the impact of consumers taking a wait-and-see approach rather than making big purchases. "If people don't buy houses, it affects how much insurance we sell," said Tracy, a Republican state senator in Shelbyville.

Along with fewer new homes sold, consumers also are delaying purchases of big-ticket items like washers, dryers and refrigerators. That's starting to hurt state sales tax collections, Tracy said.

"People are spending a bigger part of their paychecks on gas and not buying anything else," he said.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges or to beg in the streets."

Mr. Lake, thank you for your compassion and thoughts.  I thought you'd like to see some of 30 or so Belmont students who came out to help clean up the camp you talk about in your article.  I think you'd be humbled by their effort and proud of them for trying to walk at least a few miles in Jesus' footsteps....

Belmont's own Will and Susan (left pic) pick up trash that has accumulated for over 100 years at this site.  Meanwhile, an army of Belmont students (right pic) get busy with a team approach that swept the area by storm and left it as pristine and beautiful as a city park.


Homeless appreciate, need more assistance

By TODD L. LAKE • September 28, 2008

Todd L. Lake

Tennessee Voices

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges or to beg in the streets." —Anatole France

It looked like there was no one there that night. My wife, three children and I had gone out with another Belmont University family to take the Mobile Loaves and Fishes truck on its appointed rounds.

We came to a dead-end street directly under the traffic crossing the massive bridges of Interstates 24 and 40. As we parked near the railroad tracks, there wasn't a soul to be seen. I assumed our lead driver had made a wrong turn.

Then slowly, from what appeared to be under the train trestle, first one silhouetted figure and then another appeared. In the end, our truck was surrounded by 25 men and women who were understandably dirty, yet genuinely gracious and thankful that we had come. Our 4-year-old handed out a pair of socks to each person as the rest of us gave them some food.

On the disturbingly brief drive back to our middle-class lives, our kids sat in stunned disbelief that in the midst of wealthy Music City, there were people living like Stone Age hunter-gatherers. My tenderhearted 9-year-old son said, "I bet nobody knows they're here. We need to let people know."

Well, it turns out Nashville now does know that these people are here. And our city's response to their plight is to evict them. My family's response, to be sure, has been quite modest. We bought some large tents and a number of sleeping bags and gave them to the folks under the bridge. It was just a Band-aid, but it let them know that someone thought of them as fellow human beings, and it made the next night a bit less uncomfortable.

So what should Nashville do? We need to remember that the largest group of homeless are military veterans. We owe them everything from mental health services to affordable housing, regardless of the cost. Long ago, Jesus was confronted with a similar situation. He came across a man who "for a long time … had not worn clothes or lived in a house." This man cut himself and exhibited other self-destructive and antisocial behaviors.
As Jesus healed him, a strange thing happened: "A large herd of pigs … rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned."

When those in charge of the local government and economy saw the man "sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind," you might think they would have said, "We know of other homeless people living outside and in need of help. We know it will cost us a lot to help them, but it's worth it!"

But the story ends this way: "They asked Jesus to leave them." It was just too costly to do the right thing.
We are free to create gated communities of the heart to keep the homeless off our minds and out of our wallets. But we know that the right thing to do is provide them the treatment programs and housing options they need.

Of course, God won't force us to. And if he does, we can just tell him to leave town with the homeless. And he just might.

"A federal judge on Friday struck down as unconstitutional a city ordinance that barred large group feedings for homeless at downtown area parks."

Nashville city officials and police officers take note:

Ban on feeding homeless tossed

September 28, 2008

ORLANDO — A federal judge on Friday struck down as unconstitutional a city ordinance that barred large group feedings for homeless at downtown area parks.

Activists who had been feeding the homeless sued the city in 2006 over the ordinance that was passed that year.

The city has argued that transients who were gathering for weekly meals had created safety and sanitary problems for nearby businesses.

"Participants in a half-day symposium agreed to come up with a plan by next spring to reduce poverty over the next 10 years."

I don't mean to sound pessimistic here but I know that the meeting didn't go nearly as well as many had hoped for. Nashville's really good at "talking" but when it comes time for action, oftentimes not so good. 

One thing I can say is a plus here; a number of the folks at the meeting are actually doers, rather than sayers....

We'll see if this coming spring we've got anything besides more talk....



Nashville leaders stand together to fight poverty

By MICHAEL CASS • Staff Writer • September 23, 2008

Hundreds of Nashville government, business and religious leaders joined forces Monday to start tackling one of the city's most entrenched problems: poverty.

Participants in a half-day symposium agreed to come up with a plan by next spring to reduce poverty over the next 10 years. They'll soon start working in smaller groups to address housing, health care, child care, food needs, work-force development and other issues.
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Speakers and participants agreed that many organizations are doing their part in their own pockets of the city, but that strategy and coordination are lacking.

"Going it alone, we're fighting an uphill battle if there's not a comprehensive citywide solution," said Christopher Sanders, development director at St. Luke's Community House in West Nashville.

With roughly one in seven Nashville residents living below the federal poverty level, civic leaders said the problem can no longer be ignored. They said prosperity should be available to all, and large economic development projects shouldn't push low-profile residents aside.

"Poverty, I believe, is the root cause of a lot of the challenges we have," said Howard Gentry, chief executive of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce's Public Benefit Foundation and former vice mayor of Nashville.

"If we can have a reduction of poverty's effects at the same time that we work to grow and prosper, we are not only moving forward with visible projects but also taking a larger step with the invisible challenges."

The Public Benefit Foundation and the Metro Action Commission hosted the symposium in a packed ballroom at the Nashville Convention Center.

The audience heard about success stories in Miami, where Mayor Manuel Diaz started Access Miami in 2002. That program offers financial literacy training, assistance with tax returns, access to food stamps and other benefits, and funds to help some homeowners and small-business owners.

"We partner with anybody who has the same intent we do as a municipality," William Porro, Miami's special projects administrator, said in an interview. "If you're going to call a party, you better bring something."
Solution will be difficult

Porro said Miami's poverty rate has dropped from 30 percent in 2000 to somewhere between 22 percent and 24 percent today. Nashville's rate is 15 percent, said Dan Cornfield, a Vanderbilt University sociologist.

Cornfield said Nashville's strong service economy has kept unemployment relatively low here. But there's a downside, he said: Advancement toward "the American dream" generally happens only for those with specialized training.

Cornfield also said it's impossible to craft a one-size-fits-all solution to poverty. He cited U.S. Census data from 2007 that found 60 percent of Nashville's poor people are female, 37 percent are under the age of 16, 46 percent are African-American and about one in three are married.

Under the federal definition, a single person under the age of 65 is living in poverty if his or her annual income is less than $10,787. For a family of four, the threshold is between $21,000 and $22,000.

Charles Strobel, director of the Campus for Human Development, a homeless services agency, cast the issue in a moral light. He said the common humanity of all people, born vulnerable and dependent, demands that those of means identify with the less fortunate.

"The poor of the world not only should, but must be, at the top of our list of concerns," Strobel said. "Rather than allowing riches to divide us, we can discipline ourselves to realize we are all the same."

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Massive Tent City Cleanup A Resounding Success!!!

I'm pretty darned exhausted; I've been at the camp since around 8am this morning and we were busy nonstop until I left at 145p today.  I'll write more on the efforts soon but I'd like to thank a whole bunch of folks, including my buddy Denis, who hooked us up with the bobcat and the front end loader; Big Joe Dill from Inner City, who opened up all the gates and then pitched in on the effort right along with the rest of the folks, Father Charlie Strobel, Pastor Doug Sanders from Otter Creek Baptiist Church out in Brentwood and the students from Belmont he rounded up (and a special additional thanks to Doug for getting Ox a pair of sneakers - it's been over 4 months that Ox has been walking in shoes that should've been pitched back in June), Park Center employees Jeannie, WillyC, Lindsey and Courtney, a ton of concerned citizens who I can't even begin to name, and last but certainly not least, the residents of the camp, who pitched in 125 percent to get this monumental task accomplished today!

A "before and after" vid is coming but I've got to return to the camp tomorrow or Monday morning and shoot it, then splice it together, then upload it, blah, blah blah.  It'll come, just hold yer horses, okay!?!

Check it out....

(Click on image for larger size) 

 

"...on the busy streets that frame Lincoln Park's expressions of grandeur, you will find some of America's poorest citizens."

Glad to see the voices of those experiencing homelessness make mainstream news. 

Incidentally, I would like to invite Mr. Devine to spend a week with me; he'll be able to talk to 100+ homeless folks a day, instead of eight months....

Christopher Devine: Of No Fixed Address: A Collection of Voices from the Streets of Chicago

from HuffingtonPost Full Feed by Christopher Devine

Based on a 40-hour workweek, to afford an apartment in Chicago you need to make:

$14.12 an hour for a studio
$16.15 an hour for a one bedroom
$18.15 an hour for a two-bedroom

In Illinois, the minimum wage is $7.50 an hour.

--National Low Income Housing Coalition

Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood is garnished with lavish nineteenth-century houses--a medley of ornate wood cornices, bay windows, and rough-hewn stone facades. In the summer, the trees form a lush canopy over the streets, protecting the manicured gardens from the hot sun. And if you stand beneath this canopy, on a quiet residential street, surrounded by sunflowers and marigolds, it is easy to forget that you're in the middle of the third largest city in the country.

With a population of nearly 2.9 million, Chicago has more than 200 neighborhoods. Collectively, these neighborhoods constitute one of America's most diverse metropolises. Individually, however, they are remarkably homogeneous--each distinguished by race, class, or ethnicity--and the divisions between them are rarely ambiguous. (The term "redlining" was actually coined in Chicago.) Despite a series of ongoing efforts to combat segregation--all part of the Chicago Housing Authority's multi-billion-dollar Plan for Transformation--Chicago's lower classes remain at the mercy of these thick red lines, effectively barred from large swaths of the city.

The homeless are a unique exception to these constraints. Not bound by property taxes or rent hikes, a surprising number of homeless people flock to the more affluent areas of the city in search of better shelters, lucrative panhandling markets, and overall safety. So on the busy streets that frame Lincoln Park's expressions of grandeur, you will find some of America's poorest citizens. Panhandlers stand outside Walgreens, junk-filled shopping carts parade through the alleys, and it's not that uncommon to see someone sprawled out across the sidewalk, clutching a half pint of vodka with his bare ass hanging out of his pants.

Four years at a liberal arts college taught me how to speak sensitively and compassionately about the poor. But on a college campus that doubles as an arboretum, boasting 230 species of trees, the notion of poverty amounts to little more than series of liberal buzzwords. When I moved to Lincoln Park in the summer of 2005, I had no idea what to make of these homeless people wandering up and down the streets just outside my front door.

Beyond an overwhelming sense of curiosity, I can't say for sure what it was that prompted me to buy a tape recorder and invite a homeless man to breakfast at a local diner. Impulse, I suppose. But--and I realize I run the risk of sounding overly sentimental here--as I loaded the cassette and pressed record, I had absolutely no idea what I was about to get myself into.

In retrospect, the details of Robert's story are not entirely unexpected. Born in a taxicab and raised on the South Side of Chicago, his childhood dream was to become a professional boxer like Floyd Patterson. Fought too much as a young boy, didn't graduate high school, worked in a factory, drank on the job, crashed a forklift, lost that job, got another job, suffered an injury, lost that job, couldn't pay the rent, continued to drink, and so forth. His is a classic tale of the American Dream gone awry.

"I'm fifty-eight years old," he said. "I had my time. To me, I've blown it. I have no dreams. The cars, the homes, the white yard, the picket fence, grass, wife, kids, blah, blah. That's history. I'm fifty-eight. I don't want no home. I'm too old to take care of a house, cut grass, shovel the snow. I ain't into that."

But as Robert recounted his failed ambitions, I began to see that beneath the ruins of these ambitions, he had other dreams that were very much alive. And like so many people I would soon meet, in the face of despair, Robert carries on--driven by the hope that maybe tomorrow things will get just a little bit better.

"I didn't learn how to do the basic part of readin' and writin'," he continued. "I didn't get that. You ain't got that, my mama said, you ain't got nothin'. If I would've stayed in school and had the right job, I feel my book would be on the streets today. Is it too late for that book? I don't know. I ain't got nobody, I ain't got no help."

He paused.

"But that's another dream. You talk about dreams. That's a dream--if I could write a book and put it out and see the people readin' it. That's a dream."

As a devout agnostic, I find it a little uncomfortable to speak of a "calling," as if someone sitting in a cloud somewhere blew his horn and suddenly I was on the path to enlightenment. But my conversation with Robert was a calling: it was one person calling to another. Robert has a story to tell, but he doesn't know how to read or write; I have a tape recorder, a computer, a college education, and no day job.

Thus began my odyssey with Chicago's tramps and vagabonds, bag ladies and bums, with the displaced and the disposed. Over the next ten months, I spoke with more than one hundred homeless people throughout the city. I sat with men and women as they panhandled, I talked with them as they sold newspapers, and I began frequenting meals served at local churches. Eventually, I committed these stories to paper, arranging them into an oral history of homelessness: Of No Fixed Address: A Collection of Voices from the Streets of Chicago. In coming weeks and months, I will be posting excerpts from this book on Huffington Post Chicago.

For more than twenty-five years, homelessness has received considerable attention from the news media and the social science community. But with very few exceptions, the homeless have not been afforded the opportunity to share their voices in their own words, and despite a quarter century's worth of coverage, the homeless remain a largely voiceless population.

Inevitably, oral history elicits a series of concerns about accuracy and bias. Many of these concerns are well-founded, and there is no doubt in my mind that oral history is an imperfect medium. But the oral tradition forms the bedrock for all contemporary historical methodologies. What oral history lacks in objectivity, it makes up for in its unique ability to capture the ideas, the insights, and the voices that constitute our collective conscious--as a culture, a society, and a people.

I think you'll find that each of these stories serves, in its own way, to illustrate the matchless power of the oral tradition. Perhaps the most clearly articulated argument for oral history comes from a man named David, who, at the end of an impassioned description of a shit-covered toilet, says, "I'm just makin' a record for somebody, like years later, to say, 'What was this like?' or whatever. 'Cause they're not gonna tell you this at the cross-your-legs church social. But this is how real life is."

Stay tuned.

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"Cooper has noticed garbage accumulating under a highway overpass in Nashville where it appears homeless people stay."

Yep, blame it on the homeless folk; nevermind the slobs who toss out dirty diapers, fast food bags, soda bottles filled with pee or ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.  Ignore those morons who fly down the highways with crap flying out of the back of their pickup trucks, trailered boats, and RVs.

In my neighborhood we have our share of idiots who can't seem to understand that trash bags go into dumpsters and are not supposed to  be tossed into the middle of the Bell road.  It's gotten so bad around here that Tdot has installed cameras on the road to catch the skanks who keep doing this.  

Funny thing is, I rarely see homeless folk here, and this area is rife with the trappings of a disposable society....

TDOT to clean up trashy underpass

By JENNY UPCHURCH • Action Line • September 26, 2008

PROBLEM: Linda Cooper has noticed garbage accumulating under a highway overpass in Nashville where it appears homeless people stay. She says she's surprised it hasn't been cleaned up, as it's a huge eyesore and a health hazard, too.

ACTION: Litter pickup is definitely something the state highways department does. But it doesn't have the manpower to keep all locations picked up all the time, says B.J. Doughty, spokeswoman for Tennessee Department of Transportation's Region 3.

She forwarded Cooper's problem area to TDOT's maintenance department for attention.

Litter is a budget problem for the state highways office, too. It spends more than $6 million a year for its own crews to deal with litter. Meanwhile, $5 million in annual funds collected through a tax on the soft drink and malt beverage industry is used to assist local communities with litter collection and litter prevention education.
The public can help a lot by not littering. People need to bag their garbage, keep trash container lids closed, and secure loads on trucks and trailers so plastic doesn't rip off or items don't fall off while trucks and trailers are on the road.

There's also a volunteer program, in which groups "adopt" a section of highway.

Groups are asked to adopt approximately two miles of roadway for at least one year. Groups commit to doing four litter pickups on their adopted stretch of roadway. One pickup per quarter/season is recommended, although groups may conduct pickups more frequently.

TDOT provides volunteers with all necessary supplies and safety materials, and TDOT crews remove filled trash bags from the roadsides. A sign is posted recognizing a group, too.

Volunteer groups are also permitted to separately bag recyclable items and turn them in to redemption centers for fundraising cash.

WHO'S WORKING ON IT: To contact TDOT, call 1-877-SmartWay (1-877-762-7892) or e-mail TDOT.comments@state.tn.us. TDOT promises to respond in three days.
For information about the Adopt-A-Highway Program, call 615-741-6896
DAYS ON OUR LIST:2

Call for pickup on unwanted items

Nearly 500 people slept in the streets of Nashville last year. Fifty of them died there.

As I've mentioned here previously, we've been prepping to implement the citywide survey in early November, having rolled out a trial effort at Tent City.  

We are currently working with what we're calling the "Tent City 10," ten of the most vulnerable residents of the camp, and expect to make significant and rapid progress in finding them shelter and resources to assist them.  

We believe that this new effort will revolutionize the way outreach is done in Nashville, and we hope that it will also provide the community with accurate and important information concerning a group in our society of severely disabled individuals who have been mistreated by misconceptions, stigma and ignorance....  

Health needs may dictate housing for homeless

By RACHEL STULTS • Staff Writer • September 25, 2008

Nearly 500 people slept in the streets of Nashville last year.

Fifty of them died there.

Now, advocates for Nashville's homeless want to provide a chance at housing based on their health risks — and make finding housing a priority for those whose lives depend on it.

In November, Nashville's homeless will be surveyed through a program called a vulnerability index, which will rank them in order of their health needs. Those who have lived on the streets longer than six months and have a history of maladies such as renal disease, liver disease, mental illness or even cold-weather diseases could be determined to be most at risk of dying, and in the greatest need of housing.

"There's a real human need here," said downtown business owner George Gruhn, one of those who met with city leaders and social service workers this week to brainstorm how such a program could work. "My brother lived on the streets for 12 years and has bipolar disorder. This is something that is of interest to me."

The Nashville nonprofit Park Center has done a trial run in Tent City, a makeshift camp for Nashville's homeless off Hermitage Avenue. The nonprofit surveyed 35 people in August and found eight who fit the profile as Tent City's most vulnerable people in need of immediate housing, said Will Connelly, an outreach project coordinator with Park Center.

The fact that they were willing to be surveyed told advocates that the program could be done on a larger scale.

Nashville's homeless population is an estimated 2,500 to 3,000, and social service agencies say they serve 11,000 people experiencing short- or long-term homelessness each year.

"We'll have to make some changes to fully implement this. We've been used to the first-come, first-served method, where we're used to walking around and helping whoever crosses our path," Connelly said. "But we hope to use the survey as the way to incite housing action here.

"The data, once we report on it, will hit people in the gut that we have a lot of vulnerable people on the street."

They'll take their cues from Common Ground, a New York-based nonprofit that created the index and has surveyed and housed sick and dying homeless in cities such as Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York.

Program a starting point

Homeless people with particular health risks have a 40 percent chance of dying within the next seven years, said Becky Kanis, director of innovation at Common Ground and a Franklin native who was at Tuesday's meeting.

Kanis said the program offers a starting point for how to decide who gets housing in cities with many people with no homes.

Advocates hope the plan will put more at-risk homeless people into housing and help to create more resources for the homeless in Nashville. They hope it will be part of a solution that saves taxpayers money by keeping the homeless out of hospitals and out of jail.

"We're in a wrestling match and we're losing this fight," Kanis said. "Highlighting how deadly homelessness is is a way to pull people into this fight on our side."

The organization has identified the 450 most vulnerable people in four cities, and more than 2,000 housing units have been pledged as a result of the work.

Clifton Harris, director of the Metropolitan Homeless Commission, said finding affordable or subsidized housing for the homeless will be a challenge. But he thinks the health-based ranking system is a good starting point.

"Until you know who is most vulnerable and garner those resources to help those individuals, then we are just taking a stab at the problem. We can't do this by blind faith. We have to have some kind of a plan. Then we can begin to focus on services that assist them and work on getting them back into the mainstream of society."

Businessman's concerns

George Gruhn has seen people camped out in front of his Gruhn Guitars store on Broadway for nearly 39 years. He knows it affects his business, but he also worries for the well-being of those people, the ones he knows suffer from so many health issues and are only getting sicker on the streets.

Gruhn wonders how much longer the ill homeless will live in their new homes versus on the streets.

He would like to see more studies done but believes the proposed plan is moving Nashville toward improvement of its homeless situation, not just endless discussion.

""I don't for a moment doubt what they're doing is useful," Gruhn said. "If you can get people off the street, it's not only good humanitarian policy, but it's good public policy and good economic policy."

Contact Rachel Stults at 615-726-8904 or rstults@tennessean.com.

The Scene's Latest Journalistic Abomination Devastates It's Last Shred Of News Credibility...

I read the inane fiction passed off as some sort of "analysis" of Tent City by The Scene's apparent first semester creative writing student, Brantley Hargrove.

I'm not sure what he'd been smoking or snorting prior to visiting and penning that piece, but I strongly encourage him to switch to something a little less....psychedelic for future recreation as it clearly destroyed his ability to reason while causing him some seriously disturbed visual hallucinations.  It's a good thing he wasn't driving a train with a cellphone nearby....

At first I figured he'd simply confused the site with another location close to the scrapyard near Shelby, as this is where the homeless gentleman known as "Caveman" spends his days and nights, not at Tent City. 

Then Hargrove launched into this bizarre, sensationalist hyperbole, exaggeration and gross embellishment so over the top that I once again questioned whether he had ever even been to the location I have been working at for the past month.

I realized as I continued reading his fictional account that folks down at the camp had quickly and shrewdly judged his scandalous and underhanded  intentions moments after he entered.  Had Hargrove had any idea who he was attempting to swindle, he would have soon realized that he was being played harder than a pawn shop guitar at a punk rock fest by those he was attempting to manufacture a story out of.

I'm frankly surprised he didn't write about the snipe hunt residents sent him on.

Of particular hilarity was his swallowing hook line and sinker of Wild Ed's description of the astounding - and completely false - change that takes place when darkness settles in on the camp and everyone becomes wild-eyed crack smokers.  Either Hargrove was utterly naive ( I shudder to think that he is too lazy to factcheck; The Scene should fire him on the spot for that alone) or so damned stupid that he couldn't tell that the vast majority of folks in the camp can't afford a loaf of bread, let alone enough crack to get the population of a small neighborhood high each night.


It's said a sucker's born every minute. Based on what Hargrove wrote about Sosa - himself a short-time visitor to the camp and who has a serious propensity to f*ck with those who shouldn't be wandering around the area without invite -  Hargrove's gullibility and infatuation with Sosa is so breathtaking that he surely must have saved 59 others that misery by hogging it all in the hour prior to his own birth.  

From that point the piece degenerated further - is that is even possible - into a grammar-school attempt at fictionalizing the area into a plague infested, horrific third world garbage dump overflowing with sewage at every turn.

Clearly Hargrove needs a geography lesson, since he can't tell where Tent City begins or ends.  It's also glaringly apparent that someone needs to school the boy in who to actually believe when one wanders into homeless camps uninvited and without prior knowledge of the proclivities for exaggerations some of the residents themselves enjoy at the expense of noobs in the camp - especially ignorant and gullible noobs who are clearly looking to cause them harm.

I really wish I could've assisted Hargrove in presenting an accurate picture of the camp.  The few Scene readers left deserve at least that.   But the fact is, Hargrove brought the wearing of the dunce hat directly upon himself.  He certainly had an opportunity to get the real story, as the Scene had our phone numbers, along with those members at the camp who have been there for years, were fully in charge of their mental faculties and could've provided an accurate picture of the camp's conditions, residents and current situation.   

Instead Hargrove, who couldn't even come up with an original title for his fabrication and instead ripped off my title of The Contributor's October 08 cover story, then chose to attempt a cheapshot sensationalist fable that fails miserably in both providing an accurate description of the camp and its residents.

More insulting is the fact that Hargrove not only failed in providing readers the relevant facts and issues surrounding the circumstances and conditions at the camp, he took advantage of those readers and intentionally misled them.

As just one example, over three years ago city officials promised that porta potties would be set up at the site.  Unfortunately, Public Works arbitrarily decided they weren't going to honor the Mayor's request and left residents without any toilets.  Hargrove fails to mention this small - but critically important - fact, which of course then forces readers to draw erroneous conclusions about the camp's cleanliness and attention to waste disposal. 

Worse - and for this Hargrove ought to be ashamed of himself and The Scene ought to fire this hatemonger - his piece perpetuates, promotes and reinforces old racist stereotypes while generating scorn, ostracism, marginalization, hostility and the potential for outright violence towards those experiencing homelessness.  He rounds out his lame effort by heaping jet fuel on the bonfire of tension fomenting around the very issue of homelessness.  Way to look out for your fellow community members, Hargrove. With "reporters" like this, who needs Al-Qaeda?  He's doing a fine job of creating hatred and instigating violence right in his own back yard. 

What's particularly telling about this piece of garbage published by the Scene is the fact that it is clear Mr. Hargrove felt it completely unimportant to actually spend time investigating the conditions.    One need only compare his crap with the completely contradicting picture that the Tennessean, The Contributor and Channel 5's investigations - let me repeat for the Mr. Hargrove's future efforts - INVESTIGATIONS - discovered.

It's not only unfortunate but downright disgusting that Mr. Hargrove jettisoned any investigative journalistic integrity in favor of maligning, offending and blatantly lying about conditions and residents at the camp. The Scene has increasingly resorted to these tactics as competition from real and more credible news sources have resulted in rapid "round-filing" or fish-wrapping of the rag for most.

Perhaps I missed the disclaimer on the story that stated it was a fictitious account because it's just so incongruous that the same paper that provided spectacular stories on Clemmie Greenlee and Father Charlie Strobel.-individuals who have championed the ending of homelessness and the assistance of the less fortunate in our community - also allowed such a lousy, error-filled hit piece to be run on the very people these two respected and vaunted community heroes have devoted their lives to helping.  Folks in the know tell me this paper went to shit shortly after the new editor came on board.  Regardless, one thing is clear; any editor that allowed Hargrove's piece entry into mainstream is either smoking or snorting alongside Hargrove or is asleep at the desk.  In either case, a competent replacement ought to be considered, and soon. 

It could be that The Scene was, as has become its usual protocol, late to the scene and needed something substantial and sensational to sell a rag that has increasingly become nothing more than boring claptrap and fluff.

More likely however is that Mr. Hargrove is just an ignorant, self-aggrandizing fool who delights in attacking and maligning those who cannot defend themselves and are at the mercy of idiots and fecal smears masquarading as human beings.

It is no wonder those experiencing homelessness have lost their ability to trust members of the larger community.  Mr. Hargrove better hope his writing talent improves considerably soon; he may just find himself among the ranks of those he so viciously and malevolently smeared.

If The Scene has any integrity at all, Hargrove should be pink-slipped yesterday. 

With any luck, he ought to be arriving as a resident himself in Tent City just about.....

Now.

Trust me, folks will be waiting for him.....

Here We Go Again - Tent City Closing Nov. 1

I attended a major policy meeting today that addressed Park Center's implementation of the Vulnerability Index as our primary method of performing outreach.  A number of heavy hitters were in attendance and Becky Kanis, who flew in from New York to discuss the efficacy of the effort, wowed them with the amazing success rates of this approach.

Suffice it to say, lots of folks are now very interested in our numbers and we'll use Tent City as our pilot, rolling out a full, citywide implementation in early November.

And speaking of Tent City.....

I spoke with Metro PD Commander Damian Huggins, Lt. Andrea Swisher and MDHA's Clfiton Harris during a break in the conference.  They were requesting hard numbers on the folks I'd been able to relocate or get something in the works for and when I asked them what they needed the specific numbers for they stated that the camp was closing November 1st and they wanted to make certain that everyone had been given an opportunity to access available services.

Let me be clear here, folks; Clifton Harris and Commander Huggins were both very clear themselves in impressing upon me the fact that the camp would close Nov. 1st.

I'm taking this warning very seriously for a couple of reasons.  First, the concerns of advocates and local citizens will most certainly need to be addressed; hence the need for my numbers; it will buttress the argument that services have been offered.  Nevermind that it takes, on average, about 90 days to get the typical homeless Joe or Jane into housing, if everything goes perfectly and the person has all their required documentation in order - a rarity among the homeless population, to be sure. 

Second, Room in the Inn opens 11/1 and now those who are displaced from the camp will theoretically have "another" place to go.  I say "theoretically" because we as yet have no guarantee that Tent City refugees will be given priority placement at Room in the Inn beds.  Anyone who has ever stood in line waiting for a spot in an area church at the Campus will tell you that there are no guarantees you'll even get a bed and almost every night, but especially when it gets cold out, many many people are turned away for lack of bed space. 

I reiterate that I understand the rationales put forth by those pressing for the closing.  What I don't understand is the urgency that we get it closed "immediately," especially at a time when tent cities across the nation are springing up like wildfire. 

Nashville it seems is about 20 years behind the times when it comes to homeless policies; now we're looking to actually regress and send folks back onto the street. 

More coming but I'm once again so busy trying to find resources that I don't have time to do much else.....

If This Doesn't Set Your Blood To Boiling, You're Made Of Pure Ice....

These rotten bastards.  They ought to all be putting those "bonuses" directly back into the coffers.  They're lucky we don't tar and feather their asses on the way out the door.  Probably hard to get past the feet in most of em, tho....

Fury at $2.5bn bonus for Lehman's New York staff

By David Prosser
Monday, 22 September 2008

Up to 10,000 staff at the New York office of the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a bonus pool set aside for them that is worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn), Barclays Bank, which is buying the business, confirmed last night.

The revelation sparked fury among the workers' former colleagues, Lehman's 5,000 staff based in London, who currently have no idea how long they will go on receiving even their basic salaries, let alone any bonus payments. It also prompted a renewed backlash over the compensation culture in global finance, with critics claiming that many bankers receive pay and rewards that bore no relation to the job they had done.

A spokesman for Barclays said the $2.5bn bonus pool in New York had been set aside before Lehman Brothers filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States a week ago. Barclays has agreed that the fund should continue to be ring-fenced now it has taken control of Lehman's US business, a deal agreed by American bankruptcy courts over the weekend.

Barclays is paying $1.75bn for the US operation of Lehman and is keen to retain its best staff. It said it had made no promises to individual staff members about how much they will receive but that the bonus fund would be paid out. In addition to the $2.5bn cash pool, Barclays is also in negotiations with about 30 executives it considers to be Lehman's best assets and plans to offer them contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. British employees of Lehman described the bonus payments as a "scandal" as they waited anxiously yesterday to see whether a deal could be struck with buyers circling the bank's European operations.

Many of Lehman's UK staff are particularly angry about the US payouts because it has emerged that in the days running up to the bankruptcy, some $8bn in cash was transferred out of the account of the bank's European business into accounts at the New York head office.

There is no suggestion any of this cash was used to supplement the bonus fund, but partly as a result of the transfers, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the administrator to the European business, initially found it impossible to guarantee salaries would be paid. The September wages of thousands of European staff were only secured in the middle of last week, when PWC negotiated a £100m loan to fund the payments. PWC wrote to Lehman Brothers' head office in New York last week, requesting the repayment of the $8bn, but a spokesman said yesterday that the administrator had received no formal response.

The row will increase pressure on the Government to tackle perceptions that City pay is out of control. Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 yesterday, Gordon Brown said Britain would review financial services awards following the credit crisis. "There's been a great deal of irresponsibility," the Prime Minister said. "There's an element of the bonus system that is unacceptable."

However, Adair Turner, who formally takes over today as chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the UK's chief City regulator, warned it would be very difficult to police individual pay deals.

"I think it would be really exceptional in any industry to have direct regulation on what different people are paid, I don't think that's appropriate and I don't think that would be workable," he said.

"What is appropriate for regulators to do, is the need to ask searching questions about the nature of people's remuneration and to ask questions of institutions as to whether they are paying out bonuses before they are really sure whether the profits are really there."A spokesman for the TUC said the US payouts were unfair. "It looks like those that will suffer the most from the Lehman Brothers' collapse are those at the bottom of the corporate chain while many of those at the top will be looked after," he said.

Critics of the UK's attitude towards City pay also pointed out that the US has much stronger litigation laws. For example, advocates acting for Lehman creditors in the US said over the weekend that they might sue Richard Fuld, the investment bank's chief executive, who was paid $34.4m last year, in an attempt to force him to return some of the money.

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Bailout Sheanigans: From Very Bad To Freaking Outrageous!

If this doesn't send shivers up and down your up-to-your-neck-in-debt spine, you're suffering from what we health care folk like to say is an "inability to make executive-level decisions."

Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: Thirty-Two Words That None Dare Utter 

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A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration has thus far failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press. Section 8 (which ironically reminds one of the popular name of the portion of the 1937 Housing Act that paved the way for subsidized affordable housing ) of this legislation is just a single sentence of thirty-two words, but it represents a significant consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority that's so flat-out astounding that it ought to set one's hair on fire. It reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

In short, the so-called "mother of all bailouts," which will transfer $700 billion taxpayer dollars to purchase the distressed assets of several failed financial institutions, will be conducted in a manner unchallengeable by courts and ungovernable by the People's duly sworn representatives. All decision-making power will be consolidated into the Executive Branch - who, we remind you, will have the incentive to act upon this privilege as quickly as possible, before they leave office. The measure will run up the budget deficit by a significant amount, with no guarantee of recouping the outlay, and no fundamental means of holding those who fail to do so accountable.
Is this starting to sound familiar? Robert Kuttner cuts through much of the gloss in an article in today's American Prospect:

The deal proposed by Paulson is nothing short of outrageous. It includes no oversight of his own closed-door operations. It merely gives congressional blessing and funding to what he has already been doing, ad hoc. He plans to retain Wall Street firms as advisors to decide just how to cut deals to value and mop up Wall Street's dubious paper. There are to be no limits on executive compensation for the firms that get relief, and no equity share for the government in exchange for this massive infusion of capital. Both Obama and McCain have opposed the provision denying any judicial review of decisions made by Paulson -- a provision that evokes the Bush administration's suspension of normal constitutional safeguards in its conduct of foreign policy and national security. [...]
The differences between this proposed bailout and the three closest historical equivalents are immense. When the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s pumped a total of $35 billion into U.S. corporations and financial institutions, there was close government supervision and quid pro quos at every step of the way. Much of the time, the RFC became a preferred shareholder, and often appointed board members. The Home Owners Loan Corporation, which eventually refinanced one in five mortgage loans, did not operate to bail out banks but to save homeowners. And the Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1980s, created to mop up the damage of the first speculative mortgage meltdown, the S&L collapse, did not pump in money to rescue bad investments; it sorted out good assets from bad after the fact, and made sure to purge bad executives as well as bad loans. And all three of these historic cases of public recapitalization were done without suspending judicial review.

Kuttner's opposition here is perhaps the strongest language I've seen used, pushing back on this piece of legislation, in any publication of repute, and even here, Section 8 is not cited by name or by content. McClatchy Newspapers also alludes to Section 8 with concern, citing the "unfettered authority" that Paulson would be granted, and noting that the "law also would preclude court review of steps Paulson might take, something Joshua Rosner, managing director of economic researcher Graham Fisher & Co. in New York, said could be used to mask previous illegal activity." Jack Balkin also gives the matter the sort of attention it deserves on his blog, Balkinization.

But elsewhere, the conversation is muted. The debate over whether Congress is going to pass the Paulson bailout package, or pass the Paulson bailout package really hard seems to have boiled down to a discussion of time and concessions. The White House has made it clear that they want this package passed yesterday. Congressional Democrats seem to be of different minds on the matter, with some pushing back hard, and others content to demand a small dollop of turd polish to make the package seem more aesthetically pleasing, at which point, they'll likely roll over and pass the bill. Neither candidate, John McCain or Barack Obama, seem all that amenable toward the bailout, but neither have either demonstrated that they are willing to risk their candidacies to do much more than exploit the issue for electoral purposes.

Sunday morning came and went, with Paulson traipsing dutifully from studio to studio, facing nary a question on Section 8. Front page articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal detail the wranglings, but make no mention of this section of the legislation. On TV, cable news networks are stuck in the fog of the ongoing presidential campaign.

Throughout the coverage, one catches a whiff of what seems like substantive pushback on this power grab, but it largely amounts to a facsimile of journalistic diligence. Most note, in general terms, that the bailout represents a set of "broad powers" that will be granted to the Department of the Treasury. Yet the coverage offsets these concerns through the constant hyping of the White House's overall message of "urgency."
But one cannot overstate this: Section 8 is a singularly transformative sentence of economic policy. It transfers a significant amount of power to the Executive Branch, while walling off any avenue for oversight, and offering no guarantees in return. And if the Democrats end up content with winning a few slight concessions, they risk not putting a stop-payment on the real "blank check" - the one in which they allow the erosion of their own powers.

Over in the Senate, Christopher Dodd has proposed a bailout legislation of his own, which critically calls for "an oversight board that not only includes the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, but congressionally appointed, non-governmental officials" and would require the President to appoint an "independent inspector general to investigate the Treasury asset program." In Dodd's legislation, Section 8 is effectively stripped from the bill.

Nevertheless, the fact that Section 8 of the Paulson plan seems to strike few as a de facto dealbreaker can and should astound. The failure of Congress to hold the line on this point would be truly embarrassing. But if we make it through this week with nobody in the press specifically informing the public about the implications of this single sentence - in the middle of a complicated bill, in the middle of a complicated time - then right there, you have the single largest media failure of this year. END

 (The most appropriate response to this pending double-debacle, brought to us by the same folks who set up the conditions for the disaster was penned by Arianna Huffington)
The Bailout Plan: Welcome to Economic Shock and Awe

See if this sounds familiar:
There is a gathering threat to the safety of the United States. We must take immediate action. Congress must quickly grant the President and the Secretary what they want and also give them full and unfettered authority to execute the plan.

Welcome to Economic Shock and Awe (or as some have dubbed it, according to Paul Krugman, "the Authorization for Use of Financial Force").

Even the amount of taxpayer money being bandied about -- $1 trillion -- is similar. Think you got your money's worth for the Iraq war? Congratulations -- you're about to buy another pricey debacle.
We've seen how negligent the Bush administration is with our money -- flushing billions on wasteful, mismanaged Iraq reconstruction and Katrina recovery projects.

Now the same folks who brought us those no-bid, profit-guaranteed, crony-friendly, war-and-disaster-profiteering boondoggles want us to hand them control of a $700 billion Wall Street slush fund -- with no strings attached. How dumb -- or frightened -- do they think we are?

This is, as Matt Yglesias calls it, "a crisis point for American liberalism." The battle lines are already clear: Paulson and Bush and the Republican Party want a license to reward the worst actors in the financial industry and do nothing for American families suffering the consequences.

Remember a few years ago when lawmaker after lawmaker -- mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans -- said of Iraq, "If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have voted differently."

Well, this time at least some lawmakers -- mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans -- are not being so easily bamboozled. Congressional Democrats, led by Chris Dodd in the Senate and Barney Frank in the House, have put forth proposals doing away with the Paulson's demand for unprecedented authoritarian power and adding a requirement that the government do more to help troubled borrowers refinance their mortgages.
The Treasury appears willing to bend on those elements but sticking points remain, including efforts to limit the pay of executives and Dodd's proposal that taxpayers get a share of the profits if the bad debt being bought rises in value.

Let's hope Democratic resolve holds up against the inevitable charges by the Bush administration that demands for oversight, limits on executive compensation, profit sharing for taxpayers, and aid for struggling homeowners will lead to an economic Armageddon.

There is no question that the need to address this crisis is urgent and that the issues involved are complex. But urgency and complexity cannot be allowed to become excuses for lawmakers, the media, and the public to throw up their hands and allow themselves to be bull-rushed into disastrous public policy.

Over the past 30 years, Americans have been bombarded with sermons evangelizing for the free market religion of the Right, and the supposed correlation between unregulated markets and progress. In the process, the American people have been demoted from citizens to consumers, and sold a bill of goods (rather than a Bill of Rights) about how the almighty market was the essential foundation of democracy.

In the course of selling us on buying, the market-worshippers shredded the modern social contract, the hard-fought consensus that had emerged since the New Deal, which ordered our political priorities, and expressed both our communal concern for the most vulnerable members of society and our disapproval of huge inequalities. We were now supposed to believe that all could be left up to the soulless, self-correcting calculus of supply and demand. Government involvement was an anachronism, regulatory oversight an impediment.

The last few weeks have demolished that notion. In the battle over the proper role of government, the forces of the Right, the high priests of the church of the Free Market -- including Bush, Paulson, and the Masters of Wall Street -- have suffered a monumental defeat. So why are we allowing them to dictate the terms of their surrender?