Embrace the Putrid Legislative Roadkill

One month since Bellevue approved its new regulations regarding organized homeless people’s encampments, my regular readers might wonder why I have taken so long to bring it up. The answer is, I don’t really like to write in a rage. I like to have been in a rage, and then have calmed down enough so I can pretend I’m writing in a rage, but actually in my mind be on a tropical beach at Bora Bora contemplating sunbathers, and what is a Bora Bora, anyway?

Where was I? Oh yes, back in Puget Sound, Bellevue has passed an asinine new law. Either the whole law, or substantial parts of it should be struck down by the courts, and the ruling judge or judges should tell the majority of the Bellevue City Council that voted for this travesty the whole truth about their mamas.

But I am not going to attack the Bellevue City Council or their feeble unconstitutional attempt at lawmaking. Instead I am going to embrace their puny law, and, out of my joy from the sands of the Bora Bora of my head, I am even going to celebrate this piece of putrid rotting legislative roadkill.

I’m going to offer some suggestions as to how Bellevue can beat the courts and not have their pathetic law struck down, by making it even more stringent and draconian than it is.

For example there is a provision in the law that was passed that said that only “entities with a religious purpose” may host a tent city encampment. What a wonderful idea. Let’s strengthen this provision by making sure the underlying principle is applied to everyone in Bellevue, not just homeless people.

To get away in the courts with requiring that homeless people can only live in groups on established church lands, Bellevue needs to carry that to the people as a whole. All high-rise apartment buildings should be turned over to established churches, or they should be vacated and demolished. Any building or property where two or more unrelated people live must be under the control of a government recognized church. It won’t hurt anyone (aside from stepping on the rights of secular landowners, but screw them, this is government), it will just make all our lives safer, because only churches have what it takes to keep our cities safe from… people.

Speaking of being safe from people, another provision of the law says that either the managers or the host of any tent city in Bellevue is required to report to Seattle and King County public health officials any resident who has a communicable disease. Now, I like this provision of the law, but in the interest of Equal Protection and Due Process and Constitutional Crank Term This and Constitutional Crank Term That, I think it doesn’t go far enough.

The fear is that all those people being so close together in those separate tents will pass diseases one to another and trigger the next Black Plague. I totally have this fear. I get it from looking in the window at the Safeco building and seeing acres of insurance slaves working in tiny cubicles. I get it from seeing hundreds of people shoulder to shoulder for hours at a time in the stands at Little League games. I get it from seeing Bellevue City Council members sitting next to each other at hearings. Those people could have germs too! We must be vigilant! Do you want to die from “the B’vue City Council Plague of ’07”? The time to prevent it is now!

So let’s just expand the law like this: if you see people closer than six feet to one another (the typical distance between unrelated tent city dwellers) and you think one of them has a cold, you have to report them, or you go to jail.

By the way, all but one of the Bellevue City Council members’ mamas got cooties.

Dear Copyright Doctor

Another satisfied reader writes:

Dear Copyright Doctor --

You know what's wrong with you poor people? You're poor!

I mean, what do you think? That you don't deserve it? You're exactly where Jesus flang you! You reap what you sow, and you must have sewn nothing but [deleted]! Why should anybody care about any of you!?

Since I know you're an artsy freak, I wrote an artsy freak poem to explain it to you:

You're a loser and it ain't no accident--

All your karma has come, and it has went.

You had free will

but ignored the drill,

so don't cry for me to give you a cent!

signed Billy "Biff" Pill (an assumed name).

Thanks Biff! I really love to hear from my readers, and I can't get enough of your poetry! .

Your letter also touches on a subject that is near and dear to my heart -- to what extent am I responsible for all the stuff people pile on me? Did I really bring it on myself? If so, should I flog myself, or should I seek help? If so, who would I know that's good with a whip?

That brings to mind Mike Riley, Superintendent of Bellevue Public Schools. Not the whip part, the piling on part. As has been widely reported, Mr. Riley is an educator with a vision, and his vision has entailed doubling the book load on middle and high- schoolers in Bellevue. Come to think of it, that does call to mind whips too, doesn't it?

So my question is, did the middle-school kids have it coming?

That is not a rhetorical question! If it isn't the kids fault that they have received this fate, why would the Bellevue Schools have passed rules depriving those same students the means they have of coping? I'm referring, of course, to the banning of extra large backpacks at several middle schools.

Let me see if I can understand this in terms of the Billy "Biff" theory that seems to be operating here. The school administrators see the students coming in with giant backpacks. They even know why the students are using the big backpacks: the immediate reason is that they have more books. The administrators know that the students are just dealing with the situation.

But, in spite of knowing that, the administrators conclude that the students are doing something wrong! They define what that wrong is by passing rules against the use of extra large backpacks!

So the blame for carrying too many books around ends up heaped on the students. Why? Because the additional books prove they had evil thoughts when they were six? Because anyone unfortunate enough to grow up in a district where a Mike Riley is superintendent must be working off bad karma from their last life?

Absolutely. Biff says so. That's how Biff's theory works.

You may not even have a complaint. You may be, for example, homeless but happy, just pleased as a pet pig in a butcher shop to sleep on public dirt and get rained on every night. You may have never even asked Biff for that cent he was talking about.

But say the government passes a law that says that, whereas it is bad for your health to sleep on public dirt and get rained on every night, and besides it's public dirt and we don't want to see you sleeping on it, and besides we don't want you breathing our air anyway, therefore you're going to get a ticket every time you get caught, and eventually go to jail when you can't pay the tickets.

Biff's theory says that the mere fact that your means of coping has been ruled criminal proves that you had it coming.

People need to believe that sort of thing. Otherwise they couldn't possibly justify holding the homeless responsible for the natural consequences of their homelessness. They couldn't justify sending them to jail, just for doing what it takes to get by.

And you can see just how hard it is to stop people thinking that way, when

they apply the same kinds of arguments to innocent children.

Thanks for the illustration, Bellevue! And I hope you kids out there have all learned your lesson!