Democrats and “Hillary’s People” need to seriously wake up to the most dangerous man for America on the planet and could even have a chance of being our next President of the United States. Donald Trump is not only America’s number one clown around the world, he is also a very dangerous man. The Amazing Democrats have remained silent these past few weeks as we are very disappointed with the direction of the Hillary Clinton campaign. We mentioned time and time it needs a massive shake up campaign staff wise and still (even with the new television commercials for Hillary Clinton’s campaign this week), we see the same old, same old boring save approach messages.

 

This has never worked against the GOP and we certainly wouldn’t have had a hope in hell re-electing Obama against Romney in 2012 if we had taken that approach. We took our gloves off and played in the dirt with the GOP and we did what we set out to do, we won. The fact the Clintons are friendly with Trump (or Jeb Bush for that matter) makes no odds. Trump threw the first punch when recently (in the South) he brought up Bill’s sex life. So Hillary time to get serious. Shake up your campaign staff from top to bottom and don’t be such a stick in the mud by not hiring some of Obama old campaigners as remember we won for Obama in 2012. There were no rules and there simply aren’t when you are up against the GOP, they don’t play fair and Trump certainly won’t. You and your campaign are giving Trump too much of a head start and you will regret this big time should he be nominated as the GOP candidate. Didn’t you make that same mistake with an unknown Senator called Obama in 2008?

 

The secret with Trump’s weakness is his business deals in the past. Dig and dig hard. In the 1980’s in New York, who did he do business with then? Follow the money. Follow his treatment of people who got in his way. For example take the poor people of Scotland and what he did to the locals there who were just trying to make a living. Trump is not just a man about greed and stupidity, he is a very dangerous man for America and the world. Wake up Ms. Clinton please and start the fight today and shake up your campaign staff and campaign. Don’t repeat the mistakes of your 2008 campaign – Editor, The Amazing Democrats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kM1D1igMeI

LOS ANGELES — Flooded with homeless encampments from its freeway underpasses to the chic sidewalks of Venice Beach, municipal officials here declared a public emergency on Tuesday, making Los Angeles the first city in the nation to take such a drastic step in response to its mounting problem with street dwellers.

The move stems partly from compassion, and in no small part from the rising tide of complaints about the homeless and the public nuisance they create. National experts on homelessness say Los Angeles has had a severe and persistent problem with people living on the streets rather than in shelters — the official estimate is 26,000. The mayor and City Council have pledged a sizable and coordinated response, proposing Tuesday to spend at least $100 million in the next year on housing and other services. They plan, among other things, to increase the length of time shelters are open and provide more rent subsidies to street people and those in shelters.

“Every single day we come to work, we see folks lying on this grass, a symbol of our city’s intense crisis,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday. “This city has pushed this problem from neighborhood to neighborhood for too long, from bureaucracy to bureaucracy.”

In urban areas, including New York, Washington and San Francisco, rising housing costs and an uneven economic recovery have helped fuel a rise in homelessness. In some cities, officials have focused much of their efforts on enforcement policies to keep people from living in public spaces.

In places known for good weather like Honolulu and Tucson, or for liberal politics — like Madison, Wis. — frustration has prompted crackdowns on large encampments. Some cities, like Seattle, have tried setting aside designated areas for homeless encampments. But to date, no city has claimed to have the perfect solution.

Like other urban mayors, Mr. Garcetti has made promises to end chronic homelessness. Yet the homeless population here has grown about 12 percent since he took office in 2013. He, too, has been criticized for taking a heavy-handed approach to enforcement while doing too little to help people find and pay for housing. City budget officials estimate that Los Angeles already spends more than $100 million, mostly through law enforcement, to deal with issues that stem from people living on the streets.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been grappling with a soaring homeless population since he took office nearly two years ago. The number of people occupying homeless shelters peaked around 60,000 last winter and remained stubbornly high — around 57,000 — this week.

Unlike the dispossessed in Los Angeles, the vast majority of the homeless in New York are sheltered. But the presence of the street homeless, highlighted on the front pages of tabloids, has put public pressure on Mr. de Blasio to address the 3,000 unsheltered homeless holding signs on sidewalks, sleeping atop subway grates and huddling in encampments.

Increasingly, young families are becoming the most potent symbol of homelessness, with mothers who work multiple jobs living in shelters in New York or in their cars in Los Angeles.

“This is the fallout of not having anywhere near the affordable housing that’s needed,” said Megan Hustings, the interim director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based advocacy group.

“It is repeated all over the country: We work to get them emergency food and shelter, but housing continues to be unaffordable, so you see people lingering in emergency services or going to the streets.”

In Los Angeles, rents have soared all over the city and housing vouchers usually cover only a fraction of the rent for a home near public transportation. Efforts to build new housing units have floundered, and the city’s spending on affordable housing has plummeted to $26 million, roughly a quarter of what it was a decade ago.

Neighborhoods that were once considered hubs of relatively inexpensive motels and single-room apartments — Venice Beach, the Downtown Arts District — have been transformed into well-to-do enclaves filled with cupcake emporiums and doggy day care centers.

A census of the homeless in Los Angeles County released in May found that the number of people bedding down in tents, cars and makeshift encampments had grown to 9,535, nearly double the number from two years earlier. More than half of the estimated 44,000 homeless in Los Angeles County live in the city limits, according to the census. And nearly 13,000 in Los Angeles County become homeless each month, according to a recent report from the Economic Roundtable.

The spending proposal will need to be approved by the City Council and allocated by its Homelessness and Poverty Committee. The $100 million figure was chosen in part for its symbolism, said Herb J. Wesson Jr., the City Council president, to show county, state and federal officials that the city was willing to make a significant contribution to an urgent problem. “Today, we step away from the insanity of doing the same thing and hoping for different results, and instead chart our way to ending homelessness,” he said.

But many longtime advocates for the homeless here said the City Council’s proposal was not likely to make a big dent in the number of people who are finding themselves on the streets. “Encampments used to be contained to Skid Row, where city officials would try to control or ignore them,” said Gary Blasi, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied homelessness in the region for years. “Plans have been made, and never made it off the paper they’re written on. It’s not clear what will be delivered. And do the math here — it doesn’t amount to much at all.”

In New York, Mr. Blasi said that hundreds of existing housing vouchers went unused because homeless people could not find landlords who would accept them.

While overall homelessness has declined nationally, urban areas with rising rents are facing the most acute problems.

“People who would have thought of themselves as homeowners 10 or 15 years ago are renting, and it’s a grim situation in a lot of places,” said Steve Berg, the vice president for programs and policy for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “A lot of places don’t have a real grip of what the homeless population is in real time, and respond only crisis to crisis. But what we’ve learned about homelessness over many, many years is that you have to provide housing, and criminalizing the homeless doesn’t keep people off the streets at all.”

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance that lets the police confiscate property and makes it easier for them to clear sidewalks of homeless encampments. Similar legislation has been passed in other cities.

In Honolulu, where the city has spent the last two days shutting down homeless encampments that have irritated residents and frightened tourists, a federal judge on Tuesday denied the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to stop seizing and destroying people’s property during the sweeps.

Mr. Garcetti proposed using $12.6 million this year from unexpected tax revenue for rental subsidies for short-term housing and other services, including $1 million to create centers where the homeless could store belongings and shower. The $100 million, if approved, would be for the 2016 budget.

Some advocates for the homeless here have said that the rising street population has created a public health crisis on Skid Row downtown, where about 5,000 people now live outdoors.

“It’s a humanitarian crisis and a moral shame,” said José Huizar, a council member who represents the area. “It has reached a critical breaking point, that the sea of despair that we witness on the streets of Los Angeles each and every day must end, and it begins with all of us here today.”

by Gary Blasi and Phillip Mangano (LA Times)

No one likes seeing sidewalk encampments. In our experience, no one likes living in them either — if they have any other real choice. In Los Angeles, there are enough shelter beds for less than one-third of homeless people, the lowest percentage of any large city in the country. That leaves nearly 18,000 people — an increase of 18% in the last two years — to fend for themselves on the streets. Every human being must at some point lay his burdens down. But in Los Angeles, this is soon to be a crime.

The City Council has passed and Mayor Eric Garcetti is expected to sign into law by July 6 two ordinances that would allow the Los Angeles Police Department to impound any and all possessions the homeless have that they cannot wear or carry on their backs. Violators face the loss of nearly everything they own, criminal prosecution, jail and fines they cannot pay with money they do not have.

These ordinances command seizure of not only tents, tarps, bedding and sleeping bags but also “clothing, documents and medication.” The inclusion of these items demonstrates extraordinary callousness and hostility toward the poor and disabled.

“Documents” would include the military discharge papers of some of the 4,000 homeless veterans on our streets, as well as identification papers of every description. “Medication” includes drugs that, if stopped abruptly, could cause grave medical harm. Although there has been talk of amendments to eliminate these items from the list of what police can take and to drop the criminal penalty for violations, Council President Herb Wesson indicated that the ordinances could go into effect before that happens.

Every human being must at some point lay his burdens down. But in Los Angeles, this is soon to be a crime.–  

Under the ordinances — one covering streets and sidewalks, the other parks — if the police cite a homeless person for having possessions on public property, the person must move them within 24 hours. But they cannot move their possessions to any public property within the 486 square miles of the city. Where else can they take them? The city says it will provide storage (a 60-gallon garbage can), and argues that therefore the possessions are not really lost. But those facilities are located only in skid row, and not easily reachable for some.

What makes the local government’s inaction especially galling is that Los Angeles has done less than most major cities to end homelessness through the only proven technique: “housing first.” Under that model, advocates place homeless individuals into apartments, not temporary shelter, and provide them with customized services. In more than 85% of cases across the country, even the most disabled stay housed and off the streets.

Not only does housing first move homeless people and their possessions off the streets, scores of studies across the nation and here in Los Angeles show that this strategy — and not criminalization — is the most cost-effective approach. The cost to taxpayers of people living on the streets and randomly ricocheting through expensive emergency rooms and jail cells ranges from $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year. The cost of housing these same individuals would range from $12,000 to $25,000 per year, even in pricey Los Angeles.

Cities across California are implementing housing solutions and seeing homeless numbers decrease and cost savings increase. San Jose just reported a 14% decrease in homelessness and significant cost savings. Fresno reported a decrease of 50% in homeless people on its streets since 2013. In fact, every community in Southern California other than Los Angeles that reports homeless figures reported a decrease from 2013 to 2015.

Los Angeles’ decision to invest in force and intimidation is guaranteed to fail. And it won’t be cheap. As Chief Administrative Officer Miguel Santana reported to the City Council in April, about $87 million of the $100 million per year the city spends on homelessness already goes to law enforcement. Do the math: That leaves just $13 million to actually help homeless individuals, or less than one penny per day for each person in L.A. And much of that small sum goes to outreach efforts rather than housing and treatment.

The mayor and 14 members of the City Council (Councilman Gil Cedillo is the exception) seem to think they are on the right path. If you disagree, we’re sure they would love to hear from you.

Gary Blasi, professor of law emeritus at UCLA, has been an advocate and researcher on homeless issues in Los Angeles since 1983. He helps lead a partnership with the Veterans Administration to end veteran homelessness in Los Angeles. Phillip Mangano, the executive director of United States Interagency Council on Homelessness in the Bush administration, is president and chief executive of the American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness.

 

 

by Charles M. Blow (the New York Times)

Last week, Jeb Bush was asked to answer for a passage from his book from two decades ago, “Profiles in Character,” in a chapter titled “The Restoration of Shame,” in which he blamed the “irresponsible conduct” of births to unmarried women on a flagging sense of community ridicule and shaming.

Bush responded, according to MSNBC: “My views have evolved over time, but my views about the importance of dads being involved in the lives of children hasn’t changed at all. In fact, since 1995 … this book was a book about cultural indicators [and] the country has moved in the wrong direction. We have a 40-plus percent out-of-wedlock birth rate.”

He continued: “It’s a huge challenge for single moms to raise children in the world that we’re in today and it hurts the prospects, it limits the possibilities of young people being able to live lives of purpose and meaning.”

But, as a 2014 Pew Research Center report points out:

 “It’s important to keep in mind that just because a woman has a nonmarital birth, that does not necessarily mean that the mother is ‘going it alone.’ For instance, in the U.S., more than half of births that occur outside of marriage are to women who are cohabiting.”

It is interesting that Bush answered that question while on a European tour that included a visit to Estonia.

That same Pew report reported that 17 European countries (Iceland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Finland and yes, Estonia) have higher birthrates to unmarried women than does the United States.

And according to a 2013 Unicef report, “Child Well-Being in Rich Countries,” all those countries except Latvia (Bulgaria was not included) had higher ratings of overall children’s material well-being (a measure of things like child poverty rates; child deprivation of things like three meals, including some with protein and fresh fruit and vegetables; books; regular leisure activities; some new clothes and properly fitting shoes; and whether the family owned an automobile, traveled for vacations, had a computer and had a separate bedroom for the child).

In addition to material well-being, almost all of them outranked the United States in children’s health and safety, education, behaviors and risks, and housing and environment.

We spend quite a bit of energy blaming births to unmarried women for our woes, but that is only part of the picture. The other part is the way we as a society treat those women and the fathers of their children. Instead of endless efforts to sanctify marriage, the emphasis should be on finding ways to support children and encourage more parental engagement from both parents, regardless of marital status. This includes removing all barriers and penalties for people, especially the poor, to cohabitate.

Our increasing level of births to unmarried women doesn’t have to be as much of a crisis as we have allowed it to become.

First, we should seek to reduce the level of unintended pregnancies in this country. As the Guttmacher Institute pointed out in February, about half of pregnancies here are unintended, and “unintended pregnancy rates are highest among poor and low-income women, women aged 18–24, cohabiting women and minority women.”

This means that we must wrestle earnestly with poverty, as well as make a more comprehensive sex education and a full range of contraceptive options available, regardless of income.

People should become parents on purpose and not by accident.

Second, we have to examine how we have used the law as an instrument to push unwed fathers out of homes, particularly poor ones, rather than encourage them to stay.

As Elizabeth Pleck, professor emerita of history and family studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, pointed out in her 2012 book, “Not Just Roommates: Cohabitation after the Sexual Revolution”:

“The state has intruded on the personal privacy of many cohabitors, middle class as well as poor, but the intrusions have been more massive and have persisted longer when they involve poor people who are dependent on public aid. Is there a man in the house? The midnight raid of the early 1960s was the single greatest infringement on the privacy of rights of cohabitors in American history.”

 “It was a mass search for ‘a man in the house,’ targeting welfare mothers and their boyfriends in order to throw the mother off the welfare rolls and to impose specific civil or criminal punishments on the woman and her boyfriend.”

The legacy of this punishment persists to this day. And it’s a rather odd turn since, as Pleck points out, cohabitation without formal marriage was quite common in the United States before the Civil War.

Maybe a deficit of shame is not our problem, but rather a deficit of common sense in advancing policy and promoting co-parenting.

by David A. Fahrenthold (The Washington Post)

Yesterday, I wrote a story about an infamous example of a campaign spending money poorly. In 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign in Iowa ran out of good ideas before they ran out of cash, and started to buy things they didn’t really need. Like $95,000 worth of deli sandwiches. And hundreds of new snow shovels, for their Iowa volunteers. Who — because they were Iowans — already had snow shovels.

 “It’s sort of like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a snow shovel,’ ” Marisue Hartung, one Clinton volunteer, remembered thinking then. “But why?”

But that’s hardly the only time a presidential campaign has blown money on bad ideas. I asked my Post colleagues for other suggestions from the recent past, they came up with a few more:

Howard Dean’s orange hats. In 2004, the Vermont governor bought neon-orange hats for his new volunteers to wear while canvassing voters in Iowa. The idea, apparently, was to show how many volunteers really had. “The Iowa Perfect Storm: Grassroots for Dean,” the hats said. But in practice, the hats seemed to show how many of Dean’s volunteers were out-of-staters who didn’t know much about Iowa. They were aliens, whose hats made them even easier to spot.

Joe Lieberman’s “Joe Mobiles.” In 2004, Lieberman’s campaign wrapped a pair of cars in big pictures of his face anddrove them around New  Hampshire. They contributed to a feeling that Lieberman was running for president mainly so he could finally use a lifetime of stored-up “Joe” puns. The candidate talked about “Joementum” called his breakfastime meet-and-greets “A Cup of Joe” and drove around in a camper called the “Winneba-Joe.” In the end, however, Lieberman’s campaign in New Hampshire went…Joe-where. He came in fifth.

John Kerry’s “Kerry Graham” signs.  Also in 2004 — apparently a great year for terrible campaign ideas — Democratic nominee John F. Kerry was set to announce his vice-presidential running mate. Kerry picked then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), but his campaign printed up at least two other sets of campaign paraphernalia, with other nominees’ names on them. On the big day, however, some of the fake-out signs got mixed in with the real ones. So, at Kerry’s big rally, some fans wound up waving signs that said “Kerry Graham.” As in then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). Who hadn’t been chosen. Which has to have been a funny feeling for Graham.

Mitt Romney’s embroidered airplane seat covers. In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney had a campaign plane whose amenities included personalized, embroidered headrest covers for the candidate (his said “The Gov”) and staff. They were made of red faux suede. If a staffer changed seats on the plane, he or she could take the headrest cover with them. It was a small expense, in the scheme of things. But — as Romney and his staff sought to project a common touch — it probably didn’t help.

John Edwards’ $400-plus haircuts. (hat tip to Damenico Montanaro  of NPR). In 2007, the campaign of then-Sen. Edwards spent hundreds — up to $1,250 in one case — for a Beverly Hills stylist to fly out and cut the candidate’s hair. “I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature and these are the things, as an expert, that’s what we do,” the stylist told the Post back then. It was nice hair. No argument here. But for a man campaigning to fix the gap between the “Two Americas,” it was the wrong message.

 “Butt Man” and “Baloney Man” (hat tip to the Twitter user@TrueDactsStated). No, not that kind of butt. In 1996, Clinton’s campaign made foam-rubber suits that looked like cigarette butts, and had campaign volunteers wear them to harass Republican Bob Dole. The point was to highlight Dole’s closeness to the tobacco industry. In Wisconsin that year, Republicans countered with “Baloney Man,” a lunchmeat-shaped mascot whose message was that Democrats were generally full of baloney. Butt and Baloney actually met once, at a Dole rally in Fox Point, Wisc., producing this incredible quote in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel  (from a local GOP official): “Butt Man is full of baloney. Baloney Man told me Butt Man tried to grab him.”

And….

And snow shovels and deli meats. Don’t forget to read the Post story that started this discussion. It’s about Hillary Clinton, Iowa, love, desperation, failure–and some of the most infamous bad ideas  that a campaign ever paid for.

by Jamelle Bouie (LA Times)

We all know that San Francisco is booming, but it’s still stunning to see the numbers. According to the Census Bureau, in just 20 years, from 1995 to 2015, the city added 100,000 people for a total population of almost 850,000. For comparison’s sake, Washington, D.C. — another boomtown — added 78,000 peopleover the same period. More dramatic is the growth of the labor force, which increased 25% over the last five years.

For the overall economy, this is good. Population growth fuels jobs and opportunity. But not everyone benefits equally. The working-class residents of San Francisco are straining under the weight of explosive housing costs. Taking into account luxury rentals as well as older developments and rent-controlled units, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University found that, in 2013, the median rent in San Francisco was $1,491, the highest in the nation.

Limit your view to newer, market-rate units, and the numbers are even more discouraging: According to the real estate start-up Zumper, median rent for a studio is $2,650, while a one-bedroom goes for $3,500. For landlords, these high costs make renovations attractive, leading to more and more evictions. A 2013 report from the city’s budget analyst found a 38% increase in all evictions and a 170% increase in Ellis Act evictions — a state law allowing landlords to force out rent-controlled tenants so long as they sell or demolish the building, convert the units into condominiums, or let the property sit vacant for at least five years.

The bulk of these evictions have been in the Mission District, a historically Latino area of the city. Desperate to stem this displacement, area leaders, including Supervisor David Campos, have tried to limit luxury condominiums — the most visible sign of the change — with a 45-day moratorium on construction.

There are really only two ways of dealing with [housing costs]. You can try to make San Francisco less desirable, or you can accommodate demand, which has to mean more building.–  

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 7 to 4 in favor of the moratorium. But the measured needed 9 votes to pass, so it failed.

This was the right outcome. For as much as it may calm fears — one backer said it was about “saving the Mission District, saving San Francisco and saving the heart and soul of our city” — a moratorium doesn’t solve the problem at hand.

Let’s go back to the city’s population growth. Since 1995, San Francisco has grown by 100,000 people, and almost half that growth has been since 2010. Nonetheless, according to a recent report from Paragon Real Estate, the city has seen just 7,500 new housing units since 2010, and just 33,000 since 2000.

What happens when demand outstrips supply? Prices go up, of course. And that’s what we’ve seen in the city. Contrary to what some advocates seem to believe, San Francisco can’t escape this axiom.

It’s the same in D.C., where there are more people and tough building limits. The result is explosive gentrification.

At just 45 days, it’s hard to say that the San Francisco moratorium would have mattered, one way or the other. Still, that approach — placing new limits — is counterproductive.

There are really only two ways of dealing with high housing costs and subsequent evictions. You can try to make San Francisco less desirable, or you can accommodate demand, which has to mean more building, and greater density in high-income and desirable neighborhoods.

Not that letting the market do its work is a panacea. The sad fact is that high demand housing markets aren’t too keen on affordable units.

To make headway, cities will have to use the fruits of new buildings and new residents — more tax revenue — to preserve a place for low-income residents.

With more revenue, the government can move on new or stalled public housing plans, purchase vacant units for affordable housing and strengthen the city safety net. And it can enhance those efforts with new mandates, like affordable set-asides in luxury buildings. In short, it can throw the kitchen sink at the housing problem.

Some may argue that this solution is a form of trickle-down economics: Let the rich get their condos, and eventually the poor will get shelter, too. But it isn’t. It’s about local government using the market as a tool to help low-income people preserve a place in their cities. New York City’s populist Mayor Bill de Blasio understands that concept, which is why he has committed to a program of new construction.

Many European countries apply a sales tax — called a value-added tax — to almost every transaction. On its face, this is regressive: Because working people spend most of their income on goods, they’re hit hardest. But so long as these countries divert revenue to assist the needy, they can achieve progressive goals.

Likewise, when it comes to housing policy, government can harness means that may not seem progressive for ends that benefit everyone.

Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer for Slate.

By Wesley Lowery (Washington Post)

Days after the launch of two newspaper database projects aimed at tracking killing by police officers, two Democratic senators announced Tuesday that they will introduce legislation that would require all states to report to the Justice Department anytime a police officer is involved in a shooting or any other use of force that results in death.

The legislation, introduced by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), would require reporting of all shootings by police officers — including non-fatal ones — which is a step further than the Death In Custody Reporting Act, which was approved by Congress last year. Each state would be required details including age, gender, race and whether the person was armed for any police shooting.

“Too many members of the public and police officers are being killed, and we don’t have reliable statistics to track these tragic incidents,” Boxer said in a statement. “This bill will ensure that we know the full extent of the problem so we can save lives on all sides.”

(Post analysis: 385 people shot and killed by police during first five months of 2015). 

The nation has faced months of at-times tense discussions around issues of race and law enforcement following a series of deaths of black men and boys at the hands of police officers that became national stories — including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C., and Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

Those incidents have renewed calls, which have been made for years by some civil rights groups, for more standardized reporting of police use-of-force incidents. To date, there is no accurate, comprehensive data available  about how many people are killed by American police officers each year.

In a release announcing the bill, Boxer and Booker specifically cite The Post’s reporting — which on Sunday revealed  that at least 385 people have been shot and killed by police since January, putting the nation on pace to have more than double the number of fatal police shootings tallied on average by the federal government.

That piece is the latest in a yearlong effort by The Post to report on police accountability, which includes the creation of a database that will chronicle every fatal shooting by police officers in country this year.

On Monday, the Guardian unveiled a similar reporting project, The Counted, which aims to tally every person killed by a police officer — by shooting, Taser or other death in custody — in 2015.

(Post analysis: Thousands dead, few officers prosecuted). 

“The first step in fixing a problem is understanding the extent of the problem you have. Justice and accountability go hand in hand — but without reliable data it’s difficult to hold people accountable or create effective policies that change the status quo,” Booker said in a statement. “Our legislation is vital to ensuring we have the data required to make good decisions and implement reform measures that are balanced, objective, and protect the lives of police officers and the public.”

Some civil rights leaders have criticized Congress of passing little legislation in response to the unrest in Ferguson. Many activists who have led protests in the past year would consider the passage of legislation requiring detailed death in custody reporting to DOJ to be a major victory.

However, with Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate, Democratic legislative proposals face an uphill march toward passage.

“This is a step in the right direction. I’d have to read the bill to understand the details but the fact that there seems to be political will to establish a federal database is a very good sign,” said David Klinger, a criminologist at the University of Missouri who has been fighting for more than a decade for better reporting on police use of force incidents.

– Kimberly Kindy contributed to this report.

by The LA Times Editorial Board

As we honor the dead on this Memorial Day, it’s worth remembering as well the living veterans of military service who have no homes except sidewalk encampments or the occasional shelter bed, whose lives are so wracked by mental illness, addictions or physical disabilities that they are essentially dying in the streets.

At an event in Los Angeles last year, Michelle Obama challenged mayors across the country to house homeless veterans by the end of 2015, and Mayor Eric Garcetti was one of many who pledged to do so. The problem is that the population of homeless veterans in L.A. has increased since then. Although the number fluctuates daily as some fall into and out of housing and others become newly homeless, Garcetti’s office now says the city needs to house 3,154 homeless veterans by the end of the year.

We could say it was foolish of the mayor to assign himself the goal of housing an unknown number of people by a specific date. But he reasoned that a deadline would create a sense of urgency. In fact, the city did wrangle Veterans Affairs vouchers for supportive housing sooner than usual this year. It also helps that the VA is under its own deadline — not just to fulfill the Obama administration’s goal but to comply with a legal settlement by securing more housing for veterans on its West L.A. campus and in communities across the county.

So what must Garcetti and VA officials do? First, find veterans who are homeless. Some do show up at the VA or on service providers’ doorsteps, but most are on the streets. The city and the VA, to their credit, are increasing the number of outreach workers to coax veterans into the system.

And it is a system. Housing homeless veterans — or anyone who is homeless — is not as simple as handing over a set of keys. (Although some advocates say it should be.) It’s a lengthy process. And it should be shorter.

It can take 100 days, sometimes longer, for a [homeless] veteran to go from first contact with a [service] provider to walking across the threshold of an apartment.-

It can take 100 days, sometimes longer, for a veteran to go from first contact with a provider to walking across the threshold of an apartment. He or she must be confirmed to be a veteran — with an honorable or general discharge — to receive a Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) voucher. That process, which can take weeks, should be streamlined. A veteran waiting through all that is still homeless.

The good news, according to city officials, is that about 1,000 VASH vouchers and another 500 federal housing vouchers are available this year. That should be enough to cover most if not all of the chronically homeless — those who have been homeless at least a year and have a disabling problem. VASH vouchers are accompanied by case management and services provided by the VA or its nonprofit partners. Some landlords, however, are reluctant to accept a homeless person who might turn out to be an unstable tenant. And although the vouchers cover up to 110% of what the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers a fair market rent for the area, the booming rental market and scarcity of affordable housing in Los Angeles make it even harder to find a willing landlord.

City and VA officials can work on allaying landlords’ fears by making sure that they know how to contact tenants’ case managers if there are problems. The city could also help fund more housing “navigators” — specialists who find available rental units for veterans and work with landlords. City officials are also looking into fundraising for security deposits on apartments. Housing vouchers don’t cover them.

Most of the city’s homeless veterans are not chronically homeless, and so are not eligible for vouchers. But these veterans are eligible for the Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program, which helps newly homeless veterans get back on their feet, rent apartments and find jobs. This year, the VA gave $30 million to L.A. nonprofits under this program — twice as much as it last awarded, in 2013.

Of course, it’s unclear whether all of these resources are enough to end veteran homelessness this year — or the next, for that matter. But the mayor has infused this issue with a sense of urgency and put a homelessness expert on his staff who convenes monthly meetings of all the agencies involved. That’s a start. Now, he needs to work on infusing the city with more affordable housing.

Obama’s HQ, San Francisco 2012

by The Editorial Board (LA Times)

In the early 1980s, as today, Los Angeles County residents who qualified for no other form of public assistance were given a few hundred dollars in monthly last-resort payments known as general relief. It was a lifeline to people down on their luck, hoping to cobble together a few dollars to put a roof over their heads, at least for a portion of the month. The amount in 1982 was $221.

More than 30 years later, that’s still what the county pays, despite the obvious many-fold increases over the decades in the cost of housing and other basic needs. Two general relief recipients pooling their money still can’t afford a month in a typical L.A. apartment.

And leaders wonder why Los Angeles can’t make headway against homelessness.

The orientation of county government toward its moral duty to help the most destitute of people has been grudging, to say the least. The Legislature has often been its ally, for example passing a law to permanently hold the county’s obligation to 65% of the 1994 poverty line, taking the payment from a paltry $346 back down to $221 — miserly even then.

Certain that general relief recipients were using their monthly payments to fund princely lives on the streets, county supervisors embarked on one costly mission after another to ferret out fraud and whittle the general relief rolls. People who tried to make their payments go further by becoming roommates were disqualified, for example.

The county, as has so often been the case, got caught up in the minutiae of rules and regulations while losing sight of the program’s goal, which is — or ought to be — to aid those most in need and give them a way to live without panhandling or engaging in some other troubling behavior.

A year ago, the county agreed to settle a lawsuit by correcting some of its most egregious practices. Recipients can now pool their money, for example. But Los Angeles — the county with the costliest housing — still pays the lowest general relief amount in the state.

In the budget process now underway, the Board of Supervisors is signaling a new willingness to question old rules in order to spend money more effectively and provide better service to foster children, the mentally ill and others in need. It’s high time to boost payments to general relief recipients as well. They are part of the web of need that, unaddressed, puts more people on the streets and makes the streets meaner, more hopeless places to live.