I was in Portland OR recently, and noticed a goodly number of homeless people / panhandlers as you do in smaller and Southern cities these days, the bigger ones having run them all off.

So I was interested (but not surprised) to read of Portland’s city fathers (and mothers) taking state and federally-stolen tax dollars to build a palatial, $50-odd-million complex to “serve” them;

“Straddling Portland’s Chinatown and the Pearl District, a neighborhood of reclaimed warehouse spaces, the eight-story Homeless Service Center cost $46.9 million in city, county and federal stimulus funds to construct. It will contain 130 studio apartment-style permanent residences, 90 shelter beds, and offices for 50 staff members. Complimentary GED classes, haircuts and art therapy will be on offer.

…It’s a noble mission. The trouble is there are no time limits for those living in the center’s studio apartment units. The job training, GED courses and writing classes that the center will offer will be entirely optional. The center’s taxpayer-funded yoga sessions and nutrition classes, meanwhile, will be available to anybody who shows up.”

Yep, definitely no subsidization of social pathology going on THERE, for votes.

In the same week, the august leaders of Orlando, FL highlight a different lovely aspect of statism; jailing people who on their own (and not through a multimillion-dollar contract) are attempting to actually help homeless people directly, as if the helpers were feeding pigeons;

“On May 25, Orlando Food Not Bombs illegally fed a large group of homeless people, the police report states. The group on its website called for members to show up that day and defy the city ordinance, according to the report. “They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people,” said Coleman, who was not present. “For them to regulate a time and place for free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable.”

And why not? After all, didn’t Jesus say you can only feed the hungry when Caesar’s minions decreed it allowable? Didn’t Thomas Jefferson say “Give me liberty, but only between two and five on alternate Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays? No?

Statists, it turns out, don’t seem to know what to do about the homeless; to use them to buy (with your money) certain votes by coddling them, or to buy others (also with your money) by crushing them.

All you really need to know is that they know the homeless are not human, and are thus vote fodder.

It seems, in the 21st century, “Love thy neighbor” no longer meets the bare minimum required by law.