(Apologies: this should have been published on Saturday, but got caught in the computer – our fault!)

American cities – even smaller ones – seem to be submerging beneath a massive tide of homeless.

The above shows a street in Phoenix, Arizona, called “The Zone” which has a floating population of more than 1,000 people, with some claiming 10,000.

In the last few weeks, crossing the Western States on business, we here at TPOL have again seen for ourselves the problems of homelessness and poverty in towns and cities in states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

Just last week, driving through Santa Fe on business, we saw most major street intersections – and sometimes all three or four street medians – decorated by homeless beggars with handmade signs. At the same time, the few businesses we had to stop at had signs advertising “Help Wanted” and offering $15, $18, even $20 an hour. And even fast-food restaurants and copy-ship-mail stores locking their toilets to keep homeless people (and presumably druggies) out. In a smaller city in New Mexico, we saw convenience stores with security guards – rent-a-cops – rousing out drunk or drugged homeless people from being passed out on the floors of toilets, while the signs warning against “loitering” as common as the help-wanted signs.

And we were told again by friends and clients how impossible it is to find good, steady, dependable workers – even with signing bonuses and free training. And how it was getting HARDER not easier to get equipment parts and how it was taking months of waiting before overworked mechanics can get to badly-needed equipment.

And we saw other examples – in the middle of a work day: dozens of people sitting on sidewalks, in parks, and other places – obviously fit (if perhaps obviously overweight and flabby) and able to work – doing nothing. And we saw teens and preteens out on the streets during what is normally school hours – loitering around.

We see it here in Rapid City, and even smaller towns: not just people living out of their cars, but people living in makeshift tents and cardboard and pallet shelters, and we see it in Durango and Pueblo and even Cheyenne.

Why? I know it sounds like we are beating the same old drum, but it is clear that government and its actions for decades lay at the heart of it. Virtually all levels of government. Coupled with the actions of do-gooders and state-worshippers who believe that government is god and that government can solve all problems.

It is more than just the remnants of the Pandemic Panic (though we saw many signs of that). It is more than just Uncle Joe’s pathetic attempts to destroy the American and world economy. It is more than just the effects of supply-chain collapse and loss of energy sources.

It is even more than the long-term effects of mainlining the insane and mentally-ill by closing the asylums and sending them out into the community to sink or swim. Although we can see all of those elements in today’s massive homeless encampments and streeters or park-rangers or street people in cities and towns as small as 10,000 or 12,000 people.

It is a loss of hope, a betrayal and destruction of trust and faith in other people. It is a loss of an attitude of being responsible for our own actions. It is tied to increases in suicides. Especially by teens and even younger children: betrayed by parents and trashed by peers and abused by those in authority. It is tied to increases in theft, to spikes in vandalism, to many things.

Especially to a loss of liberty. We still have the “right” to survive on the government’s teat. We still have the right to speak out (as long as we don’t offend anyone, like Scott Adams did). But we still have the right to “free expression” when it comes to cross-dressing or screaming obscenities in a business or lying about the effects of farming, lumbering, mining, transportation, etc. But not to tell the truth, not to tell someone to stop acting like an idiot. And apparently we increasingly no longer have any right to work to improve ourselves and care for our families and our future if it involves doing something for ourselves, instead of depending on the government.

What is wrong with this picture?