Leading Horses to Water

We have all heard the saying. It’s used too frequently, mostly by those who don’t have much to say. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” I have no idea who said it. My guess is it was some guy named Twain or Rogers since they get quoted a lot by people with little to say.

I prefer what the late George Gobel said, “You can lead a horse to water but have you ever smelled a wet horse?”

I am not much of a fan of horses but would love to see some lead to a multitude of homeless encampments in Chico. Let’s hitch some ropes to a few tarps used as tents and give the horses a good smack on the rear and watch the encampment disappear Yellowstone style.

The residents of Chico are very tolerant folks and most still support an old city ordinance that prohibits detonating an atomic device within the city limits, but I have yet to meet anyone who is happy with the homeless situation in this city.

Now, my editor, Tim Forkes, will remind me these people are not homeless, they are unhoused. I will disagree to the end of the watering hole we lead horses to drink and society to drown in. These folks are homeless. The unhoused are those who, due to circumstances beyond their control, have lost their actual homes. Most Americans are one or two missed paychecks from being unhoused. Thanks to their poor credit, they won’t qualify for an apartment so they will be at the mercy of other family members to take them in should life turn sideways.

Shelters are filled with the unhoused; families with nowhere else to turn and who are mostly grateful for the help they receive. They have no problem with the shelter’s rules, most of which center around things like a curfew, no drug or alcohol use, no fighting; the stuff most of us learn in elementary school. I worked for a YMCA that offered free memberships and childcare to plenty in this situation. It’s the sort of kindness that was once instilled into most Americans, even the wealthy.

Then there are the homeless, many who have their own different set of challenges or issues as well as beliefs. Mental illness is a big one and for whatever reason, they eschew their meds, and any services offered, to life on the streets, parks, or shopping centers. There are also plenty of drug addicts, low level criminals, and believe it or not, people who just prefer to live on the streets. When you talk to them, they tell you how they feel they have found a community of people who they can relate to.

Arresting the homeless is just providing them with taxpayer room and board and floods our court system with cases that won’t lead to change. The problem I have with the homeless, and it seems many others have too, is they do not have a right to live on our public land. Their claims of not hurting anyone or that they are just living on land that’s there for the public makes about as much sense as a four year old holding crayons in their hands telling you they filled their coloring book and had nothing else to draw on.

Thanks to this state’s more than left leaning political leaders, the homeless have more rights than law abiding taxpayers like myself (Notice I left out the rich). You can’t just up and evict them from their encampments. It seems they must be served a seven day notice. All of this unfolds before they pack up and hop on board their stolen bicycles and ride to their next location while more of our tax dollars are used to clean up the mess, an excrement they leave behind.

It doesn’t take much logic to see how little sense this makes. It also doesn’t take much to understand most police officers never go into law enforcement to break up encampment after encampment. I’d be willing to bet the frustration over homelessness is one of the few issues people from the left and right agree needs solving. However, how to solve it is another matter.

Does the far right really believe if twenty million illegal immigrants are picked up and escorted out of the country that all our homeless people will run after the jobs that are now waiting to be filled? I have yet to find a single homeless person in the park around the corner from me who looks like he or she is chomping at the bit to plant and harvest strawberries in the fields of Oxnard. I’m pretty sure they don’t even want the jobs in high rise corner offices if they were made available.

It also makes zero sense to hand them money to use to rent a place. The homeless are far more likely to just use it to go in search of drugs or alcohol. During my time working and repairing rooms at the Motel 6 in Camarillo, homeless people who were given a free room had no problem using the mattress and bed sheets as their toilet. On the other hand, displaced families were appreciative of the roof over their heads and a night off the streets.

More conservative areas in Orange and San Diego Counties are known to load up their homeless onto buses and drop them off three hours north in the middle of the night into more liberal areas like Oxnard and Ventura. I am sure this method of passing the buck is greatly appreciated by their tax paying residents. For the homeless, it just means being inconvenienced and having to find somewhere else to live on public land. However, playing kick the can with the homeless is not a solution or any more ethical than for someone thinking they have a right to live in a public park.

If life in a park or under an overpass is preferred to life within the confines of society’s set of expectations and laws, why not just use our tax dollars and fence off a gigantic swath of empty useless space and bus homeless people from all over the state to live there rather than in our cities? They can camp out under the stars away from those who made the effort to respect the law. It worked wonders for England with their criminals and today it is called Australia.

There’s another factor in this equation. Municipalities across the nation have budgets and resources that are maxed out and dealing with the homeless and funding for more shelters and other worthwhile programs for people struggling to get back on their feet is damn near impossible without other much needed services suffering.

However, there is a solution that does not involve passing one state proposition after another which is just another tax or playing kick the human up or down the road. It’s also a solution that most citizens complain about less than they do the homeless crisis.

Why are the wealthy, the truly wealthy, the kind who buy our leaders and laugh over the loopholes they are provided, allowed to get away without paying actual taxes on ALL their income?  These are the sorts of people who own their own islands to get away from their pressures of living in a world where they squeeze into 26 room mansions or hang out on beach front property where they think they own the beach.

Fighting a war against the homeless situation, as well as the unhoused situation, is fruitless if we do not attack the real enemy of this state. Our ruling oligarchy that owns our government doesn’t think twice about millions of people losing their jobs and sleeps well knowing the bastards we elect will bail them out at the expense of innocent lives. It’s time we wage our war with them and not the dividing distractions they create that make most oblivious to who is really yanking their chain.

It also requires the average citizen to stop bitching over how much minimum wage is when there is no cap to maximum earnings without the expectation of paying maximum taxes to Uncle Sam. It means we stop rejoicing over our nation stomping of our “enemies” thousands of miles away while our corporate war machine profits as rest of us are asked to do our patriotic duty and support our endless wars. I do not know about you, but I’d rather see the heads of the likes of the Elon Musks of this world served on a platter over that of some far off warlord who is quickly replaced.

Terrorists may have claimed thousands of innocent lives with their attacks of 9/11, but American terrorists, aka the wealthy of the wealthiest, have killed millions without consequence. If you don’t believe me, ask yourselves who was responsible for shoving dangerous narcotics onto patients because of the profits they stood to make? Who used government bailouts to reward themselves with massive bonuses while men and women took their lives out of despair over losing their jobs, homes, and life savings when the market crashed in 2008? Whose corporations turn record profits from our wars while young men and women are sent off to die?

I would love to rid the city of Chico of its on-going public eyesore known as the homeless as much as any left or right leaning person in this community. However, I’d much rather see our leaders grow a set of melon sized balls and wage a larger war against those who have no problem watching communities fall apart while they thrive in a life of luxury, kickbacks, government contracts, and tax breaks.

The death of this country as a great nation and wonderful example to others has been our complacency. Most of us are content to receive enough table scraps from the rich and think we are enjoying the American dream. I see it as we have been sold a nightmare that, thanks to clever advertising, has resulted in a select few fighting over billion dollar, no, make that trillion dollar opportunities at the expense of the rest who have long been left behind.

Let’s do away with the idea of leading a horse to water and focus more on leading the masses to the front gates of the rich. It’s time they are made to shit in their pants instead of someone living on the streets. It’s time they are made to start over from scratch because they have refused to buy into the American concepts of laws applied equally to all and the idea we are all responsible to lift up others in need.

It’s also time we install leaders who are not interested in wealth and power nearly as much as they are in lifting the nation from the bottom up. We need leaders who do not care if they are not re-elected rather than doing as they please for profit. We really do not need our local police burdened with the homeless nearly as much as we need our feds funded with men and women, along with laws and supportive courts, to go after those who do not just refuse to meet their tax payer expectations, but who actually believe they are above the laws and people of this nation.

Our worst enemy is within our borders and the good news is, they only make up about one percent of the population. They are easy to find because we are not welcome in their spotless neighborhoods, the ones that get served first while they pay up last. They can be found on the internet with simple searches for our CEO’s and wealthiest people. They are the ones being shuttled from their private backyard helicopter pads to airports where their private planes await them.

We have the resources. There are our National Guard units as well as about 400 million guns in the hands of private citizens. Rather than sending men and women to fight bullshit wars meant to distract us, who is up for sending them into the Malibu hills, Bel Air, Beverly Hills and all those high-priced luxury enclaves where they go to get away from us minions?

How about a second revolution? One where we restore a country of the people, by the people, and for the people and let the wealthy stand in line and wait for our table scraps? I don’t know about you, but I am tired of seeing the backs and spirits of good people broken just so a bunch of selfish greedy bastards can thrive. Let’s lead the masses to a national reset button and push it rather than just lay back and accept what we know is wrong.