Mammary Metaphors Amok

For a long time I've been hearing about the "Continuum of Care." The expression only seems to come out of the mouths of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials and people who are busy trying to suck money out of them. As best as I can determine the Continuum of Care is meant to be like the Space-Time Continuum, all smooth and easy to swallow in every bit, but in reality it's much lumpier and full of big chunks of cockroach butt and old tennis shoes.

Here's how it works. First, we pay taxes. Yes, even I have paid taxes. My taxes may not have been as much as yours were, but I'm sure they hurt as much. Second, the federal government allocates a fraction of your taxes to HUD. Then HUD turns back around and gives your money to your local community in order to provide a "Continuum of Care."

Now, here's the tricky part. Let's say that HUD has decided that, after giving your own particular local community money to provide a "Continuum of Care" last year, your local community did not in fact fully achieve the sort of "Continuum" HUD had in mind. Then HUD withholds a whole bunch of your money from your local community to punish it for having such lousy services. This then in turn guarantees that your local community will have even lousier services next year, hence less of your money, hence more cockroach butt, more old tennis shoes, on your horizon.

Or, you could move to California.

California has just seen an increase in HUD funding for homeless services. Arnold Schwarzenegger takes credit for this, saying that he is the "Collectinator" for the state of California. He also says he has succeeded in sucking more money out of HUD because of the way he has been "nurturing" the relationship between California and the federal government since gaining office.

The whole situation has me confused. If Arnold is a better nurturer than the rest of us, doesn't that make him a girlie man? On the other hand, if it's sucking he's doing, and it is, shouldn't we understand that the nurturing is being done by federal government? Hey, let's run with that analogy!

In fact, HUD has the nipples. There are two. There is the Continuum of Care nipple. There is the Emergency Shelter Services nipple. And the rules as they stand now grant access to the nipples only to the strongest babies. Let the weak get weaker, until they starve to death.

For example, Louisville, Kentucky, is a weak baby and HUD will starve it. Louisville is weak because it only got 81 out of 100 points for its latest HUD grant application, in part because HUD has determined that the city has failed to move families quickly enough from temporary shelters into permanent housing. So Louisville had its funding for homeless programs cut by more than $3 million this year, amounting to a 55% reduction from last year's funding.

That's supposed to teach those slackers in charge of homeless services in Louisville that they should be moving more people into permanent housing like the federal government told them to do. But, aw shucks, turns out there never was any permanent housing to move people to. And now the situation has just gotten worse. The weak baby will get weaker. Thank you HUD, Mommy Dearest.

Meanwhile, Bush wants to cut HUD grants drastically over the remainder of his term. In particular he wants to cut Section 8 funding by a third, on top of recent roll-backs. But the Section 8 program is the only program that actually creates the kind of affordable housing that's needed in order for cities like Louisville to get a decent score on their HUD applications. So the cutbacks proposed will guarantee failure for every other city and state.

Except maybe California, because the Collectinator nurtures so much better than you do.

Wes and Kirkpatrick Kissing In a Tree...

A couple of days ago fellow "editor" Michele "I'm Back and I'm Bossy!" Marchand suggested that I write about that film City Without a Home that Adam Holdorf reviewed last issue. I saw City Without a Home myself (I like to call it Film Without a Clue) and Michele and I are in absolute agreement that it would be a good thing if I derided the film in a civil and thoughtful manner.

Unfortunately, in order to do that up right I would have to recap for you all what the film is about. I would have to tell how the filmmakers lived at Tent City 3 for eight days and interviewed a bunch of residents there. Then I would have to get all detailed and picky about why I thought the treatment was biased beyond belief. This would entail my remembering that fact to myself and raising my blood pressure.

I've done that too much lately. My whole last column was written in a pissy fit. I need to talk about something that amuses me. So, let's talk about recent constitutional amendment proposals!

One constitutional amendment proposal was recently in the news as California Governor Schwarzenegger backed the movement to allow foreign-born people to be president. Now, I'm all in favor of such an amendment, in spite of the fact that if it had passed in 1963 it would have allowed Barry Goldwater (who was born in the Gadsen Purchase) to have become president and I might not have enjoyed that. But if Schwarzenegger really wants the amendment to be passed, shouldn't he lie low about it? Does it really advance his cause to scare everyone with the prospect of a President Schwarzenegger?

I say let's annex Austria BEFORE we let that happen, OK?

But the amusing amendment for all time has got to be the one you knew I was going to bring up. That would be the amendment, currently being discussed in the House, intended to ban same-sex marriages. That would be the amendment of which arch-conservative James J. Kilpatrick has said, "This mean-spirited and bigoted resolution spits in the face of freedom." Me and James are in bed together on this one, ready to pick out a ring. OK, Anitra, just kidding. But seriously, I am a conservative today. Is that amusing, or what?

The amendment, in the form it is being considered in Congress, is called the Musgrave Amendment after its sponsor, Republican Congressperson Marilyn Musgrave. Its authors include lawyer Matt Daniels, who grew up with one mother and no father and doesn't want that to happen to anybody else and thinks this gets him somewhere with that, and Robert Bork, who might have been a Supreme Court Justice if the Senate hadn't freaked when they found out what a fruitcake he was. We now get to see just how right they were. That was some bullet we dodged.

You know your constitutional amendment sucks when legal scholars already can't figure out what it really means, not a hundred years after enacted, but even when it's proposed. Here it is: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

The authors say the intent in the second sentence is not to ban civil unions but only to keep courts from mandating them, while allowing state legislatures to decide the issue. But in fact what they have written allows local officials everywhere to defy state laws altogether!

Let's say this amendment passed and say I ran for mayor of Seattle and won. Know what my first act in office would be? Quoting the Musgrave Amendment I would ban all marriages in Seattle. If gays and lesbians can't marry, I would say, then in the interest of equality nobody can. And the Musgrave Amendment would grant me the right to do that, because it says no state law can require marital status to be conferred on anyone who isn't already married!

Q. What reason does Marilyn Musgrave give for opposing same-sex marriages? A. None! She says she's a representative, not a minister, so she shouldn't discuss that! Is that a hoot, or what?