Panem et Circenses?

(Note. I started this entry prior to Jeff Sessions announcing that he's allowing the various U.S. Attorneys leeway whether to prosecute Federal laws in regard to marijuana or not, so this wasn't a reaction to Sessions announcement, although I do plan to post on that topic.)

The United States has approximately 45,000 homeless people.

Of that tragic figure, 26,000 of them live in Los Angeles.

That's right, over half of the nation's homeless live in a single city in California.  Expanded out logically, as we should do, this means well over half of the nation's homeless live in the state of California.  Homeless people live, of course, everywhere. And there's more than one explanation, I suppose, for why half of the nation's homeless live in one warm state. . . but there's no good reason why over half of the nation's homeless live in one single Californian city.

This figure, by the way, has climbed dramatically in recent years, but it stretches back at least over both of the recent administrations. . .so I don't want to hear "it's all Trump's fault" or "it'a all Obama's fault".  I'm not sure whose fault it is, and its probably a lot of people's fault.  Having said that, out of a country of over 325,000,000 people, about 45,000 isn't actually as many as I would have expected. . . not that its a good figure.

Whatever the reason for that figure is, it pretty much disqualifies California from constantly lecturing the rest of the country on anything.  Indeed, California, for that reason alone, should qualify as a failed state.  If there was  a way to revoke a state's statehood, like there was once a way to revoke a dominion's status in the British Empire, California would deserve it.  And no, I'm not kidding.  With the state as messed up as it is, it would make more sense to simply revoke its statehood and return it to territory status, but for one thing.  There's no good reason to believe that the Federal Government would do a much better job at it.  Oh well.

But that does mean that California's politicians probably ought to stick to local topics.  California more messed up now than it has ever been, and it needs to fix that.  Advertisements on television about how nifty it is, in order to draw tourists, don't cut it.

Of course California would likely point out that it may be on the receiving end of the homeless, rather than the creation end. And that would almost certainly be true.  In that case, the US is creating the problem and California merely enduring it.  There's no doubt there's something to that.

Anyhow, the one thing that California definitely doesn't really need right now it so go down the same road as Stoned Colorado and make a bad situation worse, but it's going to.

Colorado, following the oilfield slump of the 1980s, saw Denver, its capitol, go from Big Dump to Super Dump.  However, some clever urban planning based on downtown renewal centered around Coors Stadium managed to pull it back out of that status, much to their credit.

Then Colorado legalized weed and the once hip and cool district down by the river became a Stoner tent city.  Denver stoners will deny it, but the city is receding back into a dump, although this time its a Stinking Stoner Dump.

Clearly, California, which already has so many troubles that it defies description, needs to follow the lyrics of the old Bob Dylan song, "Everyone Must Get Stoned".

The thesis is no doubt that California, the Tarnished Golden State, must be on the forefront of liberty and freedom. . . unless it involves certain constitutional rights in which case it must the in the forefront of retrogression. And the money will be flowing in.

But the practical effect is a lot of desperate people, a fair number of whom are already addicts, are going to be much worse off. And that's not a good thing at all.