“Lee Smith was one of the first homeless people to pitch a tent near 26th and Wood streets in West Oakland. Now, four years later, he has 100 neighbors, including two pregnant women.
“The place looks like a Third World shantytown, a village for the city’s poorest on the fringes of its bustling center. It’s one of about 100 such sprawling encampments in Oakland, and they’re not going away anytime soon. They’re likely to get even bigger,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Think about that: About one hundred Third World shantytowns just in the large California city of Oakland. But Oakland isn’t anywhere in the league of the Los Angeles-area in size so how many “Third World” bum camps are there across the once Golden State?
Summer before last Isabel and I were in Santa Monica right next to the HQ of the Rand Corporation and next to the famed Santa Monica Pier, the end of Route 66. The area is among the most expensive and posh in the country and yet every area not cleared by moving vehicles was covered by bums living out of mostly wheeled suitcases.
Last year we were in New York City twice and the age of Rudy is over, the bums are in boxes on the public streets everywhere. Much of the city looks like Third World places I’ve visited with beautiful buildings but alleys, streets and other areas exhibiting run-down filthiness.
Californians and New Yorkers have embraced the great welfare state; they pay among the highest taxes in the developed world; have had their freedoms reduced through law and regulation so much that many Europeans are more free in daily life, and yet, they don’t see what their policies have wrought: Third World living conditions for those they claim to be caring for.
They must think everywhere else is the same. How wrong they are.
Do Californians & New Yorkers think others live as they?
Robert Pratt
“Lee Smith was one of the first homeless people to pitch a tent near 26th and Wood streets in West Oakland. Now, four years later, he has 100 neighbors, including two pregnant women.
“The place looks like a Third World shantytown, a village for the city’s poorest on the fringes of its bustling center. It’s one of about 100 such sprawling encampments in Oakland, and they’re not going away anytime soon. They’re likely to get even bigger,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Think about that: About one hundred Third World shantytowns just in the large California city of Oakland. But Oakland isn’t anywhere in the league of the Los Angeles-area in size so how many “Third World” bum camps are there across the once Golden State?
Summer before last Isabel and I were in Santa Monica right next to the HQ of the Rand Corporation and next to the famed Santa Monica Pier, the end of Route 66. The area is among the most expensive and posh in the country and yet every area not cleared by moving vehicles was covered by bums living out of mostly wheeled suitcases.
Last year we were in New York City twice and the age of Rudy is over, the bums are in boxes on the public streets everywhere. Much of the city looks like Third World places I’ve visited with beautiful buildings but alleys, streets and other areas exhibiting run-down filthiness.
Californians and New Yorkers have embraced the great welfare state; they pay among the highest taxes in the developed world; have had their freedoms reduced through law and regulation so much that many Europeans are more free in daily life, and yet, they don’t see what their policies have wrought: Third World living conditions for those they claim to be caring for.
They must think everywhere else is the same. How wrong they are.