Archive for the ‘Veterans’ Tag
It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
Follow us on twitter: @DemocratAmazing
“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
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.
by The Editor (The Amazing Democrats, LA)
For seventh minutes today we got the whole run down of LA’s Mayor Garcetti’s new and proactive plan to tattle LA’s chronic homeless issue which has reached critical levels. It was very educational to get it first hand from the Mayor’s personnel who are on the front lines dealing with this massive issue that they have on their plate.
The Hollywood entertainment industry and the people of LA need to get involved with the Mayor’s office to raise private funding. What would be most helpful is a well-known Spokesperson from the Hollywood entertainment industry to step up to the task and act as an Ambassador for the campaign to raise private funding which would be coupled with Federal, State and city funding. We were lucky to have had Elizabeth Taylor as an amazing advocate for AIDS and Brad Pitt for the regeneration of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now that the task of really tackling LA’s homelessness is really picking up stream, it is so necessary for Hollywood entertainment industry and the people of LA to get involved in fund raising without delay.
Firstly to correct the main stream media when they throw out figures like 58,000 homeless in LA, this figure they pull from various agencies that are not monitoring the accurate figure of the 31,000 homeless like the Mayor’s office is currently doing. What the Mayor’s staff does; is take a head count and the homeless person’s name, going from street to street in LA from 9pm until 6am each night. Those are the times the homeless find their “spot” to bed down for the night. The Mayor’s office also has data available to him regarding the homeless numbers from all the various Federal, State and local agencies.
Breaking the figures down, 6,000 of those are veterans and President Obama has kept his promise to all of us that he made during his 2012 re-election campaign and the Federal funding to take all our veterans off the streets in the United States is finally making its way into the local coffers. 3,000 of those 6,000 veterans have now gotten housing thanks to President Obama honoring his pledge.
What most of don’t know, is the city’s hands are tied by two Federal Appeal Court rulings, one in 2007 and one as recent as 2011 which forbids the city and local law enforcement from moving any person sleeping rough in the city of Los Angeles. However, the court refused to rule that both Federal and State governments must provide housing for these people, so the city of LA is stuck with this huge problem of homelessness on our streets, with little funding from the Federal and State agencies. Not that we would advocate heavy handed tactics if there were no Federal Appeal Courts rulings with law enforcement using such means of water cannons to spray the homeless off the streets of LA if they refused to move.
The issue here and we see the difficulties the Mayor and his staff has, is that cleaning the streets of the homeless is necessary when there is a well thought out plan to housing these individuals in its place. Yes, we all do forget that sometimes that’s what each and every person living on our streets in LA is: an individual, with feelings and needs and not just another “homeless person”.
What we need to debate with our Republican colleagues, who I firmly advocate we must educate and bring them on board with us on this issue, that the cost of one homeless person on the street of LA costs the city eight thousand dollars a month to the tax prayer. The cost to house one of them for one month to the tax prayer? Three thousand dollars. That means the tax prayer is losing five thousand dollars per month per homeless person. It makes no business sense and also makes our city look like it cares nothing for the human suffering that homelessness brings. When the tourists pour in and they witness all our homeless on our streets, they view us as being a heartless, cruel, selfish and uncaring society. It is easy to explain why a homeless person on the street costs the tax payer eight thousand dollars a month. When a person lives on the street, they are going to meet all sorts of dangers, catch all sorts of diseases and will end up receiving a great deal of medical attention in our hospital’s ER departments. Then there is the emergency medical aftercare that may be needed and the follow up care not to mention the huge array of medications that might be required when this homeless individual is released back on our streets, only to end up going through all this cycle again, possibly a week or two later. That is the average and is eating away at the cities’ finances while at same time the world’s media is portraying LA as being a selfish and uncaring city when it comes to our homeless citizens.
So a lot of plans are underway and very exiting ones too at the Mayor’s office, like using old abandoned buildings owned by the city and knock them into units for the homeless. Here is where the city needs private financial donors to come forward and combine resources in the form of a partnership which would also be set off against their tax bill each year. Makes for a lot of common sense?
On top of that, after the shooting dead of a homeless individual in Skid Row recently by an LAPD Officer, there is a plan to hire only well-trained Police Officers (who have proved skill and experience records with the homeless). These Officers will be the only first responders allowed in these homeless areas; they will not be in uniform and also will work hand and hand with a social worker. I have never heard of this before and it could be the model for the future for every US city to adopt. Then when a 911 call comes in about a homeless person, the usual LAPD units will not be allowed to respond, instead a very specialized Police Officer will respond as most LAPD Officers on the force only get forty-eighty hours training on how to deal with homeless individuals. The Mayor’s office is also looking at its Mobile Emergency Homeless Response Unit and streamlining it to operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with specialized staff working with those units.
We all can be forgiven for not caring that much during the economical melt down in the US for the homeless but now things are improving slightly, there is a sense that most of us are beginning to become more vocal and proactive with this very serious issue in our city. It is also encouraging to see the media outlets like the LA Times finally taking interest to highlight homelessness and the affects it has the people who homeless and the city’s general health as well with this massive issue that must be addressed urgently.
A lot of credit must also be given to the new man on the job at the Mayor’s office, Greg Spiegel, the Mayor’s new Homelessness Policy Director. This is someone whose resume is very impressive and if anyone is the right person for the job, Greg is.
The hardest issue facing all of us is that inner fear in ourselves that be it through ill health, being laid off from our employment or simply a run of bad luck, ending up homeless ourselves. This is why most of us pass a homeless person on the street and refuse to that any interest in the issue because as Shakespeare explained it so well in Hamlet: “the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.
Homelessness on our streets is the mirror of our soul, the heart of our financial unfairness and the root of an ever silent present cancer eating away at our community and society’s heart and soul. If left unchecked, as we have done now for so many years in LA, it will destroy the very fabric of our existence, the standing we have with the rest of the world, where we could lose the hearts and minds of those in the world that support Los Angeles and what it has stood for.
So step up to the plate Hollywood entertainment industry and citizens of LA, take the plunge and do your duty as the dutiful citizens and proud members of LA’s community that you are and start partnering with the city to raise funds to get LA’s 31,000 homeless individuals off the streets and into proper housing. That way we give them hope, a safe place to live, give them back their dignity, the chance to rebuild their lives and finally a much safer and cleaner LA for us all.
© Editor of The Amazing Democrats’ (LA) blog, Facebook and twitter. March 17, 2015
The Amazing Democrats 