Years ago, the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case brought attention to a fact of which social scientists have long been aware, but which the high priests of political correctness have attempted to conceal from the public: Homeless people are dangerous.
Brian David Mitchell, the perverted self-proclaimed “prophet” who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, had been a homeless panhandler for years. Like many other homeless people, Mitchell had a history of drug abuse, crime and mental illness. But because of political correctness in the media, this point was obscured in the coverage of the story. Now, we have further evidence of the problem. Miley Cyrus decided to have a homeless man as her “date” to the MTV Video Music Awards. An aspiring model, Jesse Helt accepted Miley’s VMA trophy and lectured the national television audience:
“My name is Jesse and I am accepting this award on behalf of 1.6 million runaway and homeless youth in the United States, who are starving, lost, and scared for their lives right now. I know this because I am one of these people. . . .
“I’ve survived in shelters all over this city. I’ve cleaned your hotel rooms. I’ve been an extra in your movies. I’ve been an extra in your life. Though I may have been invisible to you on the streets, I have a lot of the same dreams that brought many of you here tonight.”
He forgot to add, “Oops.”
Miley Cyrus’s homeless VMAs date Jesse
turns himself in after being sought
by police for violating his probation
Miley Cyrus’ homeless VMA date finally turned himself in to police Thursday night and was formally arrested for violating the conditions of his probation.
Jesse Helt walked in to Polk County Jail in Dallas, Oregon just before 8pm and was booked in by duty officers.
Helt had been on the run from the authorities for three years and lived homeless on the streets of Los Angeles before he shot to fame at the MTV Video Music Awards last Sunday.
Martin Silbernagel, Polk County Director of Community Corrections, said the 22-year-old is expected to post $2,500 bail and will be released within hours.
‘He turned himself in and was arrested, we expect a court date in two weeks,’ he said.
Homeless Helt has been on the run from police since moving to Los Angeles, where he lived on the streets after breaking probation following a drugs test back in 2011.
A judge in his home state of Oregon issued a warrant for his arrest for repeatedly violating the terms of his probation. . . .
Larry O’Connor at the Free Beacon:
So Jesse has a criminal record, an open warrant for his arrest, a drug problem, and is homeless because he took the brilliant career path into the safe and secure world of modeling. . . .
The fact is, Jesse deserves to be homeless. I don’t care if that sounds cold-hearted or mean-spirited, it’s the truth.
Instead of propagandizing young people with the fear-mongering lie how a homeless person is just the same as anyone else but for a few bad breaks, Miley would have done our culture a greater service by having her prop (let’s be real, he wasn’t really her date) admit to all of the awful life choices he made that led him to living on the streets.
That’s pretty harsh, but it does point to a larger issue that has long been neglected in discussions of “homelessness.” Back in the 1980s, this became an “issue” because Democrats wanted to leverage homelessness as a way to impugn Ronald Reagan’s policies. But the problem had nothing to do with Reagan and everything to do with a series of court decisions that had made it more difficult to lock up insane people in lunatic asylums, and nearly impossible to enforce laws against vagrancy. The so-called “deinstitutionalization” of the mentally ill was a policy that had been pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberals during the 1970s. This coincided with other trends — including rising rates of divorce and drug abuse — that had the combined effect of creating a population of dopeheads, alcoholics and crazies who had no families to take care of them, and no place to go.
Furthermore, once the media jumped on the bandwagon of hyping the “homeless crisis,” ginning up lots of ignorant public sympathy, bums and petty criminals realized they could cash in on this, panhandling on the streets, often falsely claiming to be Vietnam War veterans. State and local governments started throwing money at the problem, and non-profit agencies reaped a bonanza of grant money to help deal with the “homeless crisis.” This created what was in effect an industry of professional activists — Homelessness, Inc. — who made their living from the misperceptions of the problem, misperceptions that the activists themselves helped create in order to gain the political clout necessary to shake down government agencies for more money.
It was a racket, one of the most shameless hoaxes ever imposed on the American public, and the media still refuse to tell the truth about the problem. Everything you need to know about homelessness, you can learn from reading Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed, Fred Siegel’s The Future Once Happened Here and Myron Magnet’s The Dream and the Nightmare. You might also want to read P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores, which has an excellent (and hilarious) chapter on how the “homeless crisis” was invented. That’s four books — just four — and if you read what they have to say about homelessness, you’ll know more about the reality of this problem than do 99% of reporters and editors in the liberal media.
Miley Cyrus’s stunt at the VMAs was a perfect example of how vastly ignorant liberals are about the real world. She seems to have actually believed Jesse Helt was a helpless victim, and she gave him a platform to insult Americans with his dishonest lecture.
Miley Cyrus should be ashamed of herself. But if liberals had any sense of shame, they wouldn’t be liberals, would they?
The characteristic of the modern left is no shame.
Also, it is the mentally ill who are many of the homeless. Not to mention how often do you hear of them being petty criminals? Either minor assaults, theft, or worse…
Something I left out — because I didn’t want to yammer on too long about the socioeconomics of homelessness — is the fact that many homeless people are alienated from their own families.
Think of your own worst-case scenario: You lose your job, go bankrupt, get evicted. What then?
Well, your family would take you in, right? You’d move in with your brother or sister or some other relative. So, why don’t the homeless move in with their families? Two reasons:
1. Their families are dysfunctional. How do you think somebody ends up as a psychotic dopehead, huh? If they came from solid, stable family backgrounds, they probably wouldn’t be homeless.
2. Their own relatives hate and fear them. You know what lazy dopeheads do to feed their habits? They steal. And so if somebody’s a meth addict or a crackhead, their family members have stories to tell of how the homeless person (allegedly a victim of society) has victimized their relatives — stealing money or valuables in order to feed their addiction. Also, many homeless people are violent criminals who have been convicted of sex crimes or domestic assault. You don’t want these freaks around your kids, and neither do their relatives.
Good luck getting anybody in the mainstream media to tell the truth about this problem.
These are rough statistics. But figure a third of homeless are so because they are severely mentally ill. A third of homeless are so due to drug and alcohol abuse. The remaining third are homeless due to economic hardship/hard times.
Now consider that third set. They have no where to crash on a friend’s couch or with a relative. Why is that? And social workers focus on them because they are the easiest set to help (sometimes if you catch them early they be transitioned with a job or some assistance). When you scratch the surface you fight many of these people have criminal backgrounds.
When it comes to homeless teens, it is often they are out of the home because it is either more dangerous at home (an abusive parent or relative)
Homelessness is rarely about lack of homes, but about other issues that manifest themselves as people living on the streets (or camping under bridges and in parks).
I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by this. As long as one can construct a reasonably plausible personal mythos of victimhood, one obtains instant credibility with Progressives, who are more concerned with the narrative than with the facts.
Of course, 12 year old girls sold into Muslim brothels in Yorkshire don’t figure into this calculus for some reason.
The point is take away all the PC BS and you are dealing with people who are for the most part damaged. They are not all evil or predatory (many are not) but a significant percentage of them are so.
Take a stray dog in. It might turn out to be a safe pet. Or it might turn out to be a psychotic animal.
I couldn’t help but notice that Miss Cyrus’ choice of a homeless escort was, shall we say, somewhat atypical. “Aspiring male model” is not the phrase I expect to see associated with the homeless. No, Miley had to find someone “dreamy” to be her escort. One wonders if she held auditions for the part, or did she ask a Hollywood casting agency to do the job for her.
If Miley really wanted to be edgy, she could have gone to a downtown plasma clinic and found someone named Polecat who smelled like ripe cheese and was high as a kite. That would have been more honest, brave and accurate. Alas, those are three words I do not associate with pop music.
I have a sister who has burned pretty much every bridge she has with family. She definitely has some form of personality disorder, though I couldn’t tell you which one. Narcissism is one of her great problems, though. Anyway, she has consistently managed to make her own life harder and more miserable than it has to be, then blames it on everybody else; nothing is ever her fault.
I mention this because while she’s never done drugs (that I know of), I will never trust her nor will I ever go out of my way to help her. She burned that bridge so thoroughly it’s almost like it never existed. And when I tell people about some of the stuff she’s done – and this goes back to when we were kids – their reactions usually reside somewhere in the realm of “It can’t possibly be that bad. You should give her another chance.” Nope, sorry. You weren’t there, you don’t know her, you don’t know how manipulative she is and the kinds of things she’ll do to get what she wants from you. She is not a good person, and I choose not to enable her manipulativeness and lying. They still think I’m “overreacting” but I don’t particularly care. She made her bed, now she can lay in it.
So I can fully understand family that wants nothing to do with their “black sheep” members who have made very bad choices and, in many cases, continue to do so.
You can’t accurately lump all homeless people together. A good number of them are temporarily homeless, usually these are the falling on hard times types. It can include entire families, including married couple with kids. These you can actually help relatively easily and are not destined to stay homeless. Our church helps run a shelter for these people and they can usually turn their lives around in a reasonable amount of time. We help the dads get jobs again and give them a stable place to live for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.
I also used to be a librarian working with the public in a large urban downtown library, i.e. the place where stereotypical homeless people hang out during the day. To those who don’t think we should let them hang out: the courts disagree with you and libraries have repeatedly lost that battle in the courts. We are not even allowed to permanently ban people convicted of assaults on our property and lost a lawsuit when we tried to.
A small minority of homeless are mentally retarded. In my experience I would put that as less than 5% of the ones I have dealt with. No way they can ever take care of themselves and no mental help will fix that. A larger number are not retarded but harmless and for the most part unemployable. Some combination of no social skills, crappy family background (ie former foster care kids), not very smart, non dangerous but debilitating mental problems, have never had a real job before, etc. Those all should be put in some sort of group home for their own sake.
A large number of the rest are some combination of dangerous insane, felons, and/or drug abusers. Those are the ones that need to be involuntarily institutionalized somewhere. That is probably cheaper to society than leaving them on the streets since right now they take up a huge amount of police and hospital resources and occasionally kill or seriously injure people.
That is exactly what it was: A stunt. I wonder who is guiding Miley.
*sigh*
Some homeless people are dangerous. And some are mentally ill.
Some.
The Merhige family had a black sheep, ne’er do well, mentally ill son whom they invited for Thanksgiving, despite other members of the family not wanting to have him around. The holidays are supposed to be about kindness and familial unity, right?
Well, we know how that one turned out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054677/Paul-Merhige-trial-Thanksgiving-Day-killer-handed-7-life-sentences-sickened-judge.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/thanksgiving-massacre-witness-paul-merhige-ate-dinner-sang-songs-then-executed-family/
The parents of the six year old girl that Merhige murdered tried to sue Merhige’s parents because they invited him for Thanksgiving. This is one of the reasons the court gave for dismissing the lawsuit:
Families should be encouraged to include a troubled family member in the family circle. A holding that the Merhiges owed a legal duty to the members of their family and extended family in this case would discourage families from providing a haven to troubled relatives for fear of civil liability. The result would be to foist those most in need of family interaction on the governmental and charitable social service networks, thereby thrusting a family problem into the hands of society at large, where unhappy outcomes are all too common.
http://www.4dca.org/opinions/Feb%202014/02-19-14/4D12-3701.op.pdf
Not sure what to think of that.
This gesture at the VMAs was applauded by people on the left and right when it happened. The first thought that came to my mind, though, was being a victim does not make you a good person. Poor does not equal good. If Hitler got mugged would he suddenly become a good guy?
You read articles about the run-down Uptown neighborhood in Chicago that blame Reagan for kicking people out of insane asylums, never mind that this started in the 70s when Reagan was only the governor of California.
Most may be more accurate, but not all .
[…] There’s more to the story of the homeless guy who accepted an award for Miley Cyrus at the Emmy’s. It looks like a lot of people were duped by that little stunt. […]
Well, you’ve demonized every other minority group, so you might as well attack the homeless, too.
Hey, did you hear in recent polling voters find conservatives out of touch, and intolerant?
Hey, asshole, in my community we have a recently opened homeless facility thanks to the efforts of an insurance company (ooh – “big” business!) that donated a commercial building for conversion to a nonprofit agency (chaired by a guy running for state legislature as a “gasp”, REPUBLICAN!) in cooperation with a TEA PARTY (“gasp” again) Mayor of a very conservative city. Efforts to do the conversion provided by Habitat for Humanity (a Christian organization) and local church volunteers (some of which are known, “gasp”, BIBLE THUMPERS!) I used to be on the Board of a nonprofit agency that lived and died on Federal programs for the homeless, i.e, HUD Emergency Shelter Grants. And the program “died” because of lack of consistency in funding from year to year – took the combination of conservatives and churches to reestablish an effective program.
So, it took conservative Republican Tea Party Business types to accomplish what liberal, government programs could not sustain.
You really are an asshole – suspect you haven’t done shit in your life for anybody,
Forgot to mention Christians in the 2nd to last paragraph.
No, you’re a douchebag. And naming a single charitable program while consistently pushing to cut any kind of social spending for things like mental health, EBT, subsidized housing, or supporting any kind of legislation that makes less obstacles in finding employment like stopping companies from running pointless credit checks unless you’re in banking or law enforcement, or making it easier for people with criminal records to find work, means ZERO. You are part of the problem.
Most homeless are not mentally ill or dangerous. A very large minority are mentally ill and/or dangerous, particularly the single adult males. Probably about 25% of the homeless have a serious mentally illness. About 50% have a substance abuse problem.
Depending on how you define homeless, about 20% of the homeless are age 5 or under.
Because, if government doesn’t do it, it doesn’t exist. It’s never about actual people with Progressives. It is always and only about the accumulation of power and the destruction of institutions which traditionally have taken care of those less well off: Family and Church.
But of course, by advocating for increases in social spending, you get to believe you are a very, very moral person, without having to actually, you know, get your hands dirty. Remember, not everyone who slaps a “Coexist” bumper sticker on their Prius will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Pete, we could debate the numbers. If you go up you’ll note I said about a third are mentally ill (I am talking significant mental illness not just being crazy from living on the streets) and about a third are substance abuse. But the first group often self medicates so your 50% number is correct.
But I agree, those who end up homeless through simple hard times can often by helped if intervention is soon enough. Church groups like yours are doing that and thank you for your service to these people.
That said, I would think long and harm about inviting homeless individuals around one’s home and children. Serving them through a shelter or church program is far different than having them at your house.
Maybe you aren’t aware of this, Stacy, but Miley Cyrus has a hell of a lot more to be ashamed of than taking a homeless guy to an awards show.
Homeless youth (I am talking teens) are mostly not violent. But some are. What they are is usually kids who have gone through a lot of abuse and bad conditions at home (sexual, physical and/or neglect). Being homeless is often better than being home.
But because of that history, you would not want your teen kids hanging out with these kids as friends (unsupervised). What could go wrong with that? And there is a bit of that that does go on (which is why Miley’s stunt was irresponsible, but when has Miley ever been responsible for anything?)
Yes, but let’s examine one issue at a time here. Besides, this particular stunt has potential repercussions beyond Miley’s own behavior.
*nods*
As long as it is not “all,” that gives us something to work with. Like you said to petetheelder below, we could argue the numbers.
[…] Homelessness: Myth and Menace […]
And it’s not only a matter of making bad choices, it’s the failure to take personal responsibility for doing so. Every bad choice is always someone else’s fault. I say this over and over again: if you refuse to admit your mistakes, you never learn from them.
p.s. I wouldn’t rag on you about not helping your sister. I would congratulate you for being strong willed enough to force her to take responsibility.
Heh heh heh heh…Polecat…
As a side note, I would also say that the breakdown of “homeless reasons” by percent is going to be different depending upon location, so discussion is probably irrelevant anyway.
I’ll say this, too: there is definitely a non-trivial percentage of homeless people (typically men) who are that way by choice. They simply don’t want to work and desire no responsibility of any kind, not even to the extent of collecting welfare. There’s lots of folks like this in Florida.
I live in San Francisco, where the government of perhaps the most liberal metropolis in America just passed the so-called “SF Fair Chance Act,” legislation ordering employers to remove inquiries about job seekers’ convictions (or, as in my personal case, lack of same) from applications.
That means that in my home town, I — a person who has never been found guilty in court of anything more serious than running a stop light — don’t have an advantage over another applicant who has done time in prison.
That’s “fair,” right?*
*(It’s a rhetorical question. If you bother to reply, you’re an idiot.)
I haven’t read the books mentioned, but I do recall that in 1990 or 1991, US News & World Report had a lengthy article on how the problem was inflated. I only recall two of the specific examples they gave. One organization would count you as homeless if you didn’t have a private bathroom within your residence. So that meant if your college dorm had shared bathrooms, you were homeless. Another organization said if your residence didn’t have 350 sq. ft. of space per occupant, then all the residents of that space were homeless. I recall the second one in particular because at the time the article came out I lived in a 650 sq. ft. 1 BR luxury apartment, with A/C, dishwasher, washer/dryer, cable. And while I lived there alone, all the couples living in the complex’s 1 bedroom apartments all counted as homeless (rent was $760/month – a lot of money to pay to be homeless).
You have to make your favorite inconsequential problem sound like it’s an epidemic, or you won’t get anyone to notice it or do anything (especially give you funding). That’s how we got age of consent laws and prostitution made illegal (married women in their 30s and 40s didn’t want to compete sexually with women in their teens, so they hyped the “problem” of husbands abandoning their wives and families to run away with 14 year old prostitutes), how we got opiates made illegal (hyping of orientals getting “good christian white women” hooked on opium so they could take advantage of them sexually), etc. And during the Reagan and Bush I administrations, you have to make the Republican President look bad AND get funding for your “help the homeless” organization by claiming there are 15,000,000 homeless in the country (a figure so ludicrously high that, if it were true, you’d be tripping over the homeless everywhere). Notice how, with no action from Congress, the homeless problem disappeared during the Clinton administration, and then resurfaced during the Bush II administration?
Dude’s been a fugitive from a probation-violation warrant for the last three years and he’s getting bail? That there was any other reaction to that motion but “Hahahahaha…no” is proof that we live in absurd times.
“Families should be encouraged to include a troubled family member in the family circle.”
This is a true statement on the face of it. The qualification that should be made, and it’s a very serious qualification, is what did his parents know of his condition when they invited him? From the decision it’s pretty clear they knew he was mentally unbalanced and dangerously so. Therefore, they were stupid in the extreme to bring him to a family gathering.What we have here is another stupid, lawless decision by some black robed shysters who “tut, tut” after the fact and go home to their gated communities where they live beyond the cares and troubles of the people they lord it over.
A douchebag trolls and calls a another douchebag. Don’t choke on the irony troll.
Remember that Portland is an outlier of San Francisco, and, as such, is another island of utter insanity. The Willamette Valley used to be a good place to live in the early 60s (lived in Albany 61-66), but emigration from Kalifornia poisoned the place.
A friend currently lives in Salem, and he’d like to get out, but can’t. From Eugene to Portland is an intellectual wasteland.
Yeah, I’m a “troll” for having a difference of opinion, and breaking up the echo chamber in here. You obviously have no idea what a “troll” is and use it just to criticize people you don’t agree with. And socially conservative rigid christian douchebag, calling me a douchebag is pretty hilarious.
Sounds like a good piece of legislation, and much needed. Odds are, you whining bitch, is that due to the fact that you’re not a convicted felon,you have more job experience, and education so will get the job anyway. Fact is, people that have criminal records have ZERO chance of starting their life over, or going straight under the current paradigm. Even one conviction, no matter the context, can bar you from employment for life. How is that fair? It’s even worse with credit checks. We have been suffering under a dismal economy the last few years, and people who might have lost everything due to a job loss, and got behind on their bills, or suffered bankruptcy have to be kicked while they’re down because of couple of spineless HR rats, and bean counters? How is that doable, asshole? And I bothered to reply to show you what an idiot YOU are.
“People” cant craft real, lasting legislation with a sense of consistency. And family can always take care of people? Out of touch, much?
You’re a troll because of your attitude. I call you a douchebag because that’s what you are.
You may not like what we have to say, but there is a great deal of thought in this place. If you want an echo chamber, go back to your libtard sites.
Yes, Family and Church. It is only when people believe that they can outsource personal obligations to the government; that they can discharge personal obligations by voting to have other people pay the bill, that social structure breaks down. The evidence is there to see for anyone who isn’t willfully blind.
And BTW, who do you think populates the government and bureaucracies? Last time I checked it was “People,” who are fallible, especially when they are driven to accumulate power over others.
Spoken by someone who’s never owned or operated a business. May I suggest you invest your own money in an idea and hire anyone you want. I would avoid retail, though, especially if you have soft heart for “reformed” shoplifters.
Thank you. Though I can’t take all the credit. I’m naturally disinclined to give people second chances once they’ve screwed me over hard. Basically, if you make it onto my shit list – which is actually quite difficult to do – you’re on it for life. She caused me so many problems growing up that she’s lucky she still has teeth and a straight nose. People who don’t deal with truly manipulative people on a regular basis don’t understand what they are really like.
The name-changing is highly amusing. It’s like watching a teenager who can’t handle a disagreement and thinks he’s clever by twisting the names of everybody smarter than he is. Poor baby is totally out of his league.
I’ll now await his targeting of my name with a snide comment about what an idiot I am. Maybe I’ll print off a copy of Larry Correia’s Internet Arguing Checklist in the mean time just to make sure the resident troll stays on script. He’s doing a bang-up job so far.
Sorry, but not of the opinion that business, and property owners get the final say, especially when they are not the voting majority. Fact is, a single criminal conviction basically black balls you for life, and even if you learned the error of your ways, and were eager to reform you couldn’t under the current paradigm. Ironic when Christians that are all for forgiveness of sins want to exile someone over their crimes. All it does is lead to more crime too, and destroys the entire concept of reform. For instance should a simple drug possession pinch really forever bar you from working? That’s absurd.
Hey Wombat, did you notice the ObamasKhakiSuit (which looked very unattractive on him, btw) quintuplets in this thread?
Yeah, there might be thought behind it, but its totally inhumane, douchebag.
There’s a word for what you describe in your first paragraph…bureaucracy.
I’d wager that for every single poor s.o.b. who is actually homeless there is some bureaucratic governmental or NGO person depending on that homelessness so that they (the bureaucrat) can draw a pay check at taxpayer expense.
It’s an industry. It requires numbers to survive so whatever they have to do to male those numbers is fair game.
One could say the same about Portland, Maine and Boston…
garcinia kola
Homelessness: Myth and Menace : The Other McCain
Boy I hear ya. I bet she says all her problems are your fault as well. Some times it is better to cut someone like that out of your life. I did and suddenly I had a slew of cousins who were speaking to me again because I disassociated myself from that family member