by Jerry Esmay, Stevensville
Homeless problem – Missoula plans on expanding how they handle this group and where they will let them camp. Very little mention of intervention to get the mentally ill folks help nor drug abuse therapy for those addicted. The city and county officers, of course, assure us there will not be any increase in the number of these folks. Study just released over in Billings where they traced some of their homeless, found that 93 of this group cost the city over $10 million last year. Most large cities are experiencing these same problems. Everett WA just shut down a lemonade stand being run by a 12-year-old because it violated a city ordinance while within sight homeless folks were being left to illegally camp on city property. Denver is spending twice as much on the homeless problem than they spend on K-12 education and veteran problems. The homeless campers have taken over a park near City Hall in Seattle and some employees are afraid to come to work now.
Southern border problem – things continue to get worse. Record numbers of illegal immigrants are arriving and have overwhelmed the Border Patrol’s ability to process them so many are being allowed to simply disappear into our country. Additionally, the checking of these folks for COVID seems to be non-existent. What should scare each of our readers is that this is being done in SECRECY by the Biden administration. It’s time for some of us to stand up and yell, “the President has no clothes on.”
Defunding the police – some cities are finally realizing that this concept is nonsense. Crime rates continue to spiral out of control to include not only murders and robberies, but random shootings, carjacking and looting. This week Portland finally decided to move back toward sensibility by hiring back officers who had previously left, only to be faced with a lack of applicants – DUH!
Final thought – seems to this old cowboy that we can fully expect the homeless problem to further spiral out of control as a direct result of letting all of these illegal immigrants in. If we are already short on housing and good paying jobs, why wouldn’t we expect the flood of illegals to make it worse???