As one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest nation the reality that a local motel has 75 families, one to a room, with more than 150 children between them nauseates me.
As to what government is “supposed to do” here is a first pass at a basic list:
1. Ensure a free, comprehensive education that includes at a minimum the ability to read and reason, history, training in participatory democracy and the work ethic, and responsibility without descending to a one-size-fits all factory model of education.
2. Ensure safe infrastructure, which includes roads, communications, efficient basic healthcare, bridges, water, power, and sufficient affordable housing including supportive housing for those with handicaps and disabilities of all varieties so that our population is housed, children are secure, and the waste ensuing from homelessness is eliminated, rather than pouring money into the black holes of the incarceration industry, the shelter industry, the victim industry, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the child welfare/foster care/adoption industries.
3. Ensure competent governance, which includes the absence of corruption, transparency, civic engagement through a strong FOIA law that does not exempt government, and a strong open meeting law that does not exempt government.
4. Creation and maintenance of long range planning on a statewide basis using multi-modal methods of analysis.
Just for starters. A nation or state that does not invest in its present ensures for itself a future as a backwater; investment in true infrastructure requires collective action, not rugged individualism based on “I got mine, who cares about the next guy.”
The homeless thing nauseates me too. Which is why I get so irritated by government waste when the money is needed for important things. We are going to be coping with these children when they grow to be disfunctional adults sometime within the next 20 years, we must invest in them now.
Did you add all of this to the Party Platform posts? Some of it may already be there but this is a great summary.
Yes, I know, NIMBY. I won’t bore you with my story again. How about accessible if not affordable? I’ll find a way to pay the rent.
So who thought that bridges are the government’s responsibilty, but not roads? A bridge without a road- bot only a bridge to nowhere, but a bridge from nowhere. (Unless they meant foot-bridges or dental bridges….)
Anyway, I voted for all those things, except broadband and housing. Though I probably could have voted for housing, especially for the elderly.
Where a resident can just use ( and pay for) the programs s/he needs or uses.
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p>The problem with your poll Amber, is that it reinforces a consumer view of government when we should be cultivating some “citizen” thinking. And good “citizens” understand the importance of governments role in buuilding and maintaing the public structures that in turn, build and maintain a healthy community for everyone. Folk with children and single swingers, senior citizens and teen agers, those of us who are disabled and temporarily abled, poor folk and rich folk, smart ones and stupid ones, small business and big business, public education for little kids and big kids, artists and ditch diggers, clerks and managers and on and on and on.
What my post does, and can do, is remind those who read it that these functions, and many others, can only be done as collective endeavers, and cannot happen as a result of the efforts of individuals or small groups.
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p>Either we collectively pay for, maintain, and appreciate these major endeavors, or our society collapses around us.
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p>Long range planning, for example, is not a “consumer issue” at all.
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p>One of the sayings in all 12 step programs is “failure to plan is planning to fail” – one purpose of this post is to put that idea front and center.
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p>So much of the infrastructure degradation around us is the result of being reactive, only and a failure of long range, objective planning.
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p>The real costs of inaction are too often ignored, and the list in my post here is, of course, partial with the goal of making the reader THINK of whether or not what he or she relies to function and to have a good quality of life can possibly be created without the collective action represented by governance.
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p>So, frankly, I don’t understand your apparent consternation!
that government should ensure that adequate care and services are available to its most vulnerable citizens, without descending to a one-size-fits all factory model of care.
The list of the collective endeavors that government provides – or can provide – but that no individual can actually “do” is certainly longer than my “thought provoking” post – or any post really.
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p>The issue of providing for children who never will be able to live independently, so they will be safe, comfortable, and well cared for during their natural lives IS another issue requiring honest appraisal, long range planning, and collective resources – i.e., a government that is about collective responsibility, not enriching an elite or being an assembly line “one size fits all” feeder for an industry [the so-called “school to prison pipeline” is a heinous example of an assembly line approach to eduction functioning as a feeder for the prison industry].