The Compelling Economic and Humanitarian Reasons for Addressing Homelessness. As I continue to write about the ways in which the currently popular Small Government Idolatry pre-empts rather than utilizes the analyses necessary not only to knowledgeably weigh costs and benefits of various choices, but also to actually accomplish the “fiscal responsibility” that this particular element of “Political Fundamentalism” claims to serve, The Denver Post published an article today describing Denver’s highly successful program (initiated by Mayor/Governor-elect Hickenlooper), which brought both businesspeople and advocates for the homeless into the process, and has reduced not only the amount of homelessness, but also, quite dramatically, the costs the homelessness imposes on tax payers ( http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16580456). This is what responsible government looks like.
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Folks, a lot is at stake in this election, for Colorado and the nation. The Far-Right is jazzed, “storm-trooping” their way to glory (Are We Civilized?). The Left and Middle are largely apathetic, still coming down from the dizzying heights of 2008, disappointed by their own unrealistic expectations, and unwilling to fight hard to make continual, marginal gains in the real world. As a result, we are “ceding the world to the most ruthless”, as one of the most ruthless (Henry Kissinger) once put it.
The craziest artifacts of right-wing, glassy-eyed zealotry on the Colorado ballot this year, the “bad three” ballot initiatives (Amendments 60 and 61, and Proposition 101 ), the return of the “egg-mendment” (probably, among other “unintended consequences”, illegalizing in vitro fertilization, and transforming pregnant women into legal incubators, vulnerable to involuntary manslaughter charges for having a miscarriage while doing anything but laying in bad to avoid the possibility), and, perhaps not most apocalyptic, but possibly most embarrassing (and that’s saying a lot, in this company), the very real possibility (if still not probability) of Colorado sporting a “Governor Tom Tancredo” come inauguration day (http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2010/10/07/poll-hickenlooper-leading-tancredo-surging-maes-sliding/15941/).
If you don’t feel you have positive hopes to motivate you to get out there and make sure that every single relatively sane, hopefully somewhat informed individual in this state (or your state, if it isn’t Colorado) votes, then let the prospects of the resurgence of the never-quite-banished nightmare of right-wing xenophobia, belligerence, extreme individualism, indifference to social injustice and real human suffering, moralistic tyranny, economic illiteracy, and fiscal folly motivate you. The world may not have been converted into a paradise of progressive enlightenment in the year and a half of the Obama administration (though he gets way too little credit for the enormous headway he has made), but it will certainly be reverted to the anti-constitutional (despite the mantra to the contrary), anti-liberty (despite the mantra to the contrary), anti-compassion, anti-tolerance, anti-social justice, anti-international cooperation alliance of ignorance and greed that it was just a year and a half ago, and that all too many are all too eager to make it again.
What do you think would happen to Colorado under a “Governor Tancredo”? It was embarrassing enough to be a resident of CD 6 with him as my congressman, the icon of xenophobia representing me. But if he became this state’s governor, there would be a flight of capital, both human and material, and continuation of our downward spiral to the bottom of national rankings in our commitment to the welfare and education of our people.
Don’t say it can’t happen; it can. It’s up to you and me to make sure that it doesn’t.
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