The scourge of homelessness

I was in New York last week, and when walking out of a pizzeria, I saw a homeless man holding a cup for donations. I walked up and gave him the change in my pocket – left over from the purchase of a giant slice of New York-style pizza.

But while I was giving him change, I said: “Hello, how are you?”

What I soon realized, to my sadness and horror, was that no one had asked him that question in a long time. Because, he immediately went into a litany of complaints about being thrown out of a hospital, his ailments, etc. The words came out of him as an avalanche, grateful for a chance to escape after someone finally showed interest enough to ask.

I realized that it’s not enough just to quickly give change to a homeless person and walk away. Equally as important is taking the time to see the homeless as people, as human beings deserving of all the same common courtesies, kindness, consideration, and care we grant everyone else in our daily interactions.

Too often, the homeless are ignored, looked past, as if they don’t even exist. I can’t imagine what that would do to the human psyche.

A lot of people don’t like to give change to the homeless, because they suspect the money wouldn’t go to the right place. I would argue: it’s not up to us to decide what the right use of money is for anyone else. What IS up to us is to treat others with basic human dignity, kindness and courtesy. That includes not only giving money when you have some to give and another person clearly needs it, but also treating everyone – no matter how they look – with respect and consideration.

Every time I see a homeless person, I am reminded that we as a society have a shameful failure to account for. One of the richest countries on Earth should not have homelessness. It shouldn’t happen. While the causes of homeless may be complex and many, the solutions are there if we are willing to invest in them. It’s not rocket science. And it’s not a mystery.

In another recent trip, this one to San Francisco, I walked down a street next to an elderly man struggling to walk with a walker. His clothes were filthy – clearly showing signs that he had been wallowing in his own waste. The man walked with difficulty but with as much dignity as he could muster.

What a tragedy that that man should have been in that state. Where was the outrage?

I suspect one of the reasons we don’t like homeless people is because when we see them, we feel guilt. We are reminded of our great societal failure and our continued failure to do something about it. But the current solution, of blaming the homeless, of trying to get rid of them through harassment and herding them around to different communities, is not a solution at all. It exacerbates the problem and ads to our collective failure.

This is the season when we are supposed to be generous, giving, and think of our fellow man. I hope some of us will embrace that to great enough measure to think of those we would rather ignore – and then do something.

Filed under: Current Events , economics, homeless, homelessness, income disparity, New York, poor, poverty, San Francisco, society, wealth gap

Is older better?

Old sewing machines on display at the Santa Monica Place Mall

I was at the Santa Monica Place Mall over the weekend and I saw an intriguing store window display. It was rows upon rows of old sewing machines stacked up floor to ceiling.

I’m not sure what the store was for. I think it was a clothing store. But the display stopped many shoppers, including myself, dead in our tracks. We were mesmerized by the beautiful designs and painted patterns on the old machines. The metal and wood, with which they were made, seemed to harken back to a simpler era before digital technology and plastics; an era that must have been better somehow.

I realized that we regularly venerate old things such as those sewing machines. New sewing machines can do a million more things, and more efficiently, than those old clunkers. But the new ones don’t have store displays dedicated to them.

Over the same weekend, I also took a trip to historic areas of town such as Placita Olvera, the historic birthplace of Los Angeles. It’s a small cluster of buildings over a city block in downtown L.A. Nothing really that special about it, except that the buildings have a different look to them and also harken back to a different time. People there seemed fascinated by the faded brick buildings.

I was also at the Griffith Park Observatory. It’s a beautiful old building, carefully restored. It comes from an era you’d imagine Batman would step out of. In fact, if you had to pick a structure that you could imagine Batman’s home would most likely look like, Griffith Park Observatory would be it. There were crowds of people there to see the Observatory. Understandably so, since it’s on top of a mountain overlooking much of Los Angeles and Southern California. But you have to wonder if as many people would have been there if the observatory was a modern one, nothing made special by the passing of time.

It must be human nature to look back and see the past with rose-colored glasses. The people who lived during the time of those old sewing machines, or when Olvera street was built, or when the observatory was first put to use, would all probably marvel and embrace modern-day life. They’d probably give up their wood-and-metal machines for fast, efficient, plastic ones. They’d swap their cold, brick buildings for insulated, central-air-conditioned ones. And they’d probably be just as happy, if not more so, in an observatory made of digital screens interpreting from a telescope that could see much more by virtue of orbiting the earth (not just hovering above Los Angeles).

So why do we look at these representations of the past and marvel? Are we looking at how far we’ve come? Are we wishing we had never come that far? Does it give us hope for what may come in the next 80 years?

The answers, I suspect, are: yes.

Filed under: Current Events , 1930, 1930s, Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles, Olvera Street, Placita Olvera, Santa Monica, sewing machines

Is the U.S. really broke?

With the failure of the congressional “super committee,” it is time for a conversation shift in our political discourse.

We keep hearing about how America is broke; that it cannot afford health insurance benefits for the elderly and poor, and social security for retires; that it cannot pay to rebuild its infrastructure, to invest in education and future generations, to encourage better wages and jobs, to innovate in new technologies – and the list goes on.

But is it an irrefutable fact that we are in fact broke and at our knees? I don’t think so. It seems to me we are merely lacking in imagination, not resources.

There are things we need to fix, of course. The housing market is a disaster. Unacceptably, people are still losing their homes when they don’t have to be. Too many people who should be working can’t find any jobs, let alone quality ones that pay enough for a decent middle class life. Wages have not kept up with the cost of middle class lives for decades now. And that has only gotten worse in the last few years.

College education is slipping out of reach for our next generation. And for those who get one, the burden of debt incurred is crushing. It is preventing them from being innovators and risk-takers, which we need for a vibrant competitive economy.

The federal government is borrowing too much money. While its budget deficits are not a problem, yet, they will be in another 10 to 20 years. Interest rates on government debt could rise in another few decades. If the cost of borrowing increases, it could set off a dangerous chain reaction that could threaten the very fabric of the American economy. Something similar is dangerously close to happening in Europe with the economies that use the euro common currency.

But that’s not happening now here in the U.S. It is simply something that could happen in the future. In fact, at the present moment, there is a lot going right in America.

Even with millions of Americans out of work, the vast majority of people still have jobs. They still work, earn a living, spend their earnings. The economy is damaged, but it is still humming along. We have trucks on the roads transporting goods. Corporations are still in business. Everyone is still paying taxes.

Young people are still going to school and learning important new skills. Despite what seems like every attempt to quash the inevitable, new energy technologies are taking hold and new businesses trying to gain a foothold in a Green Energy future.

The car industry in Detroit has recovered well from the brink of disaster. The government’s intervening there was an unquestionable success and saved millions of jobs.

Wall Street and banks have also been doing surprisingly well and making a lot of profit (although there are hints that some firms are now starting to lay people off again in what may be a sign of new trouble).

There is a lot of money being made in this country, a lot of productivity, a lot of tax revenue. We just don’t seem to know what to do with all of this wealth and resources. We seem paralyzed by fear, uncertainty, and the unknown.

But that’s not what this country is about. We are innovators, risk takers, creative thinkers, adapters. We are generous, kind, neighborly, thoughtful. We are fierce when righteous, reflective when chastened.

We are inspiring. And right now, we merely lack inspiration.

It is Thanksgiving. As a collective people, we need a moment of taking stock to figure out what we do have and what we can best do with it. This is a time when we are supposed to be doing just that on a personal scale. But it’s time we think bigger and outside our individual selves.

It is a shame that we have spent so much time and energy talking about what we cannot do. Why in the world should we be unable to fix our roads and bridges, ensure our elderly have medical care, provide affordable colleges for those who want to go, create a fair playing field through sensible regulations that allow our businesses to thrive in a transparent and legitimate free market?

We have done these things and more. There is no reason we cannot do them again.

Filed under: Current Events, Economic Crisis, Politics , budget, Congress, congressional, deficits, economy, supercommittee

Penn State’s appalling behavior

In a story as horrible and disturbing as the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State, it’s surprising that one of the most appalling aspects of the story is the behavior of the university’s students.

After the removal of Coach Joe Paterno, this video is an example of the response from the students. A body, which is supposed to be educated and striving for a higher level of discourse, is rioting in a destructive mob. And why? Because the university is holding accountable the people who did not hold themselves to account in one of the most horrendous examples of institutional coverup of heinous alleged crimes.

In the coverup, it really does not matter whether the allegations against Sandusky prove true or not. What matters is that so many people – at the highest levels of the institution – appeared willing to act above the law, to put aside the welfare of children, and to avoid the responsibility of reporting allegations to authorities and making sure they are investigated and dealt with.

The students should be outraged by the behaviors of those charged, not at those very same people being now, finally held accountable. Instead, they are behaving as if something to which they are entitled – the sanctity of their football program – is being taken away from them.

This may be hard for them to fathom, but some things are indeed more important than football. How will they account for their behavior – which they themselves are so proudly capturing on video – a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now? How will they explain themselves to their children?

The moral bankruptcy with which these students behaved is symptomatic of the apparent depravity that has engulfed Penn State’s social fabric. It is hard to imagine that a coverup of the magnitude now uncovered could have gone on in any other context.

One hopes that Penn State is a rare exception. But in the backs of our minds, we know that it most likely is not. And that’s the more horrible aspect of this story.

Filed under: Current Events, news , abuse scandal, Paterno, Penn State, Sandusky, students, university

The Romney paradox

There’s been a lot written over the past few months about the Republican primary voters’ apparent lack of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney. Almost all news coverage refers to Romney as the frontrunner and inevitable GOP nominee, because he has the support of the party establishment and many of its major donors.

Analysts and journalists have been trying to make sense of that lack of voter support with varied reasoning: Romney is Mormon and there’s lots of anti-Mormon bias; Romney is seen as flip-flopping on issues and lacking in core values and beliefs; Romney is boring and doesn’t have the showmanship of Herman Cain.

But I think all of this Romney coverage is wrong and shows how completely out of touch both politicians and journalists are with what is going on in America right now. It is the height of arrogance to pronounce Romney the frontrunner when in polls and actual voting he has either lost or polled about even with one or two other candidates. And it is insulting to voters to suggest they are looking at candidates other than Romney because other candidates have more showmanship, or hold more conservative positions.

Perhaps it’s time for us all to start looking at the facts, and covering the political season as news, not as some kind of horse-race or insider dealing. If people are not showing support for Romney, maybe it is because they simply are not convinced he is the right man during this critical point in American history.

In fact, I would argue that the reason none of the GOP candidates have been able to pull ahead – since the lack of a clear frontrunner is not only a Romney problem but shows a lack of consensus toward any of the GOP candidates – is because GOP primary voters are not really hearing anything new from any of them. And voters are smart enough to realize that right now, in what is the closest we have ever come to a second depression, new ideas and bold leadership is what we need.

If we look at the GOP primary race in that context, is it any wonder then that Herman Cain showed temporary momentum by offering something new and bold with his 9-9-9 plan? Without scrutiny of that plan to help voters understand its ups and downs, voters did the best they could to evaluate it and were genuinely excited by someone who seemed to be offering fresh, bold, game-changing ideas that might actually help our economy.

As it turns out, by analysis from both the left and the right, Herman Cain’s proposal is ill-conceived and would not help. But by the time news coverage started to take him seriously, his 9-9-9 plan had already found resonance among an electorate thirsty for real leadership and fresh ideas.

The candidates – and current elected leaders – are busy bickering about budget cuts versus tax cuts. Meanwhile, the voting public is sending them clear messages that those kinds battles are antiquated and pointless when the country is facing such dire economic difficulties.

The voting public is more united than politicians and the media want to believe. Most voters are frustrated and disgusted, and it is hard to blame them. There is little difference in motivation between a GOP voter and a person marching in Occupy Wall Street protests. In both you will find someone who has lost patience, and who is looking for leadership and meaningful solutions to our many economic problems.

The next election will be a wake-up call for both the GOP and the Democratic Party, unless the parties wake up before then.

Filed under: Current Events, Economic Crisis, Elections, journalism, news, Politics, Presidential Race , GOP Democrat elections presidential Herman Cain Mitt Romney Republican Occupy Wall Street, journalism, news