The Mainstream Press publishes a story about homelessness during a Democratic administration.
WAIPAHU » Pastor Joe Hunkin picked his way around rusted car axles, propane tanks and two-by-fours studded with bent nails to find a homeless encampment where people have been cooking and sleeping directly behind Waipahu High School, in an area that received unwanted national attention this month.
Hunkin walked past a pit bull puppy and peered over a makeshift shelter of tents and tarp hidden by koa haole and elephant grass, then pointed toward the high school's athletic complex barely a football field away.
"The school is right over there," Hunkin said last week. "This isn't right."
The strip of land is bounded by Waipahu High School on one side and the calming waters of Pearl Harbor's Middle Loch on the other, where the Navy's mothball fleet sits idle. It's the most visible portion of an enormous homeless encampment that stretches five miles over approximately 50 acres of city, Navy and state land that serpentines around Waipio Point Access Road, the Ted Makalena Golf Course and the city's Waipio Soccer Complex and back down to Pearl City in the opposite direction, said Beth Chapman, who uncharacteristically lost a suspect in the swampy brush last year after five straight days of searching the area with her husband, Duane "Dog" Chapman, and their bounty hunting family.
And the problem is getting worse.
Doran J. Porter, executive director of the Affordable Housing and Homeless Alliance, believes more and more homeless encampments like the one behind Waipahu High School are springing up on Oahu as Honolulu police and city officials continue to push Oahu's homeless off of beaches and out of city parks.
"I don't know why it would surprise anyone that they've found these places," Porter said. "You get kicked out of one place, you have to find somewhere else to survive the night. ... And now their desperation is starting to show."
Girls at the Waipio Soccer Complex walked into the women's bathroom a few months ago and found a naked woman bathing in the bathroom sink, said Michele "Bud" Nagamine, who runs the 25-team Leahi Soccer Club that practices and plays at the soccer complex. Boys who went into the men's bathroom also found a naked man bathing in the sink, she said.
This sort of story is ordinarily reserved for a slow news day during a Republican administration. You know the drill. Bush tax cuts for the rich robbed the people of trillions and trillions in potential budget surpluses that would otherwise have gone to housing the homeless.
Yet here we are. The Obama administration is spending trillions and trillions anyway, even though we don't have it, telling everybody that this is no time to worry about deficits. Yet the homeless population is growing.
Well this is no surprise to anybody with a little savvy about economics. Obama's policies are aimed at growing government, not the economy. This is forcing millions out of work, with the result that foreclosures are skyrocketing. In other words, people are losing their homes and becoming homeless.
No, the real surprise is that the press has actually reported on it a year and a half into a Democratic administration. And even more surprisingly, the article makes no mention whatever of George W. Bush. Obama has spent his entire presidency arguing the Bush is still to blame for every Obama policy that hasn't worked out the way Obama said it would. What a perfect opportunity for the press to pile on. Shocking that they didn't, but then they didn't mention Obama and his policies either.
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