The Fight Worth Having

Meanwhile as the Obama and Clinton campaigns continue their frankly ridiculous cat-fight over who can appeal to the bigger closeted undercover racists and sexists, standing just to the right of the big cloud of fur and smoke is John Edwards who happens to be in a Fight Worth Having with Bill O'Reilly over exactly how many homeless veterans we have in America and what we can - and should - do about it.

It all began innocently enough during the New Hampshire Democratic Debate, like so...

Edwards: What you see happening in America today, if you're president of the United States and you're looking at this from altitude is you see a very few Americans getting wealthier and wealthier, you see the biggest corporations in America's profits through the roof -- ExxonMobil just made $40 billion, record profits -- all of that happening at the same time that we have 47 million people with no health care, 37 million who will wake up in this country tomorrow worried about feeding and clothing their children. Tonight, 200,000 men and women who wore the uniform of the United States of America and served this country honorably will go to sleep under bridges and on grates.

It's time for us to say and it's time for the president to say enough is enough. This is a battle for the future of our children. This is a battle for the middle class.

Edwards made his claim and apparently this simply got O'Lielly's goat as he initially claimed "there couldn't be that many.."

O’Reilly said, "They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? ... If you know where’s a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it."

This didn't sit to well with Paul Rieckoff of IAVA.

OLBERMANN: Well, we know what we want to say here, and it involves suggesting Mr. O'Reilly should go and do something anatomically impossible to himself with that attitude. But do you know any homeless vets, by any chance?

RIECKHOFF: Absolutely. I mean, the VA says that there are approximately 200,000 of all generations. We know that there are at least 1,500 that have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our organization and others are in touch with them every day. I made a few phone calls today to my friends who work in Los Angeles. They go out to Skid Row every day, and they said they're tracking six Iraq veterans alone that are living out in Los Angeles. We know there are about five or 10 here in New York. So, they're there. This is a very real problem. And all you have to do, to be honest with you, if you're Bill O'Reilly, is go downstairs and look out in the streets of New York, and you can find homeless veterans living on our streets every night.

Are Paul and Keith off base? It's seems that the Washington Post had no trouble confirming Edwards claim.

Several readers have asked us to check this surprising statistic, often used by Edwards. The language may be overly dramatic, but the figure is an official one, from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The department believes that one-third of the adult homeless population of the United States "have served their country in the Armed Services." A posting on the department Web site says that about 195,000 veterans are "homeless on any given night" and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year.

Veterans Affairs estimates that about 45 percent of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness, and 70 percent from alcohol abuse or other drug abuse problems. Roughly 56 percent are African American or Hispanic.

And what does the VA Say?

About one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. Current population estimates suggest that about 195,000 veterans (male and female) are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. Many other veterans are considered near homeless or at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing.

The amazing thing is that rather than simply admit defeat and go home, O'Reilly decided to migrate his argument into so-called "Class Warfare". He re-focused on the view that these people aren't in this position because of economic conditions - even thought the VA Says that for some of them it IS Economic - but instead, they are there because of mental illness and addiction, which of course means there's "nothing anyone else can do."

But when O'Reilly tried to make this point with his own hand-picked guest,
Joseph Califano, head of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, he didn't get what he bargained for.

CALIFANO: Now one fact, a very important fact about the veterans. I mean, the veterans are -- the real tragedy here is most of those veterans have had combat experience that are suffering from drug and alcohol problems and mental health problems. And we are not taking care of them.

O'REILLY: And that is something that should be addressed.

CALIFANO: The Veterans Administration spends about half a billion dollars a year in substance abuse treatment and methadone maintenance for the heroin addicts. But that's not enough.

O'REILLY: OK.

CALIFANO: And it's not a --

O'REILLY: Nobody is arguing that, Mr. Califano.

CALIFANO: OK.

O'REILLY: What we're arguing about is this is being demagogued by a guy who's trying to put up a phony scenario, Ms. Beversdorf, that it's poverty driving the people who are in trouble out on the street. It isn't poverty. It is, as Mr. Califano defined, abuse of substance and mental health problems, which I think everyone agrees, particularly with combat veterans, should be addressed in a very urgent and aggressive way. But that's not what Edwards is saying, madam.

That is exactly what Edwards is saying. Califano said it: What we're spending to address the problem is "not enough". That is an economic issue. Pure and simple. People with mental health problems are not capable of making the best choices on their own behalf, people with addiction problems aren't either - they need treatment, they need HEALTH CARE!

That's why Edwards said : "we have 47 million people with no health care,"

And it seems that the last thing O'Reilly wants - is for anyone to get more healthcare, particularly when the reason they need healthcare at all is the fact that they dared to serve their country and may have become mental-ill and drug addicted because of that service.

To Edwards, it'a not really about how or why these people are in this position, it's a moral question of what we should be doing about it.

The one with the phony arguement here is clearly O'Reilly, particularly following Edward's appearance on Letterman.

He then addressed the subject with Fox Contributors Carrie Lucas and Col David Hunt.

After a month of "searching" (ie. Waiting for Homeless guys without TV's or Radios to CALL HIM) O'Reilly still can't find the vet living under the bridge. Try Over Here - Billy.

Hunt: We're not doing enough. I haven't seen 150,000 beds. It's wrong for one veteran to be on the street.

Lucas: This is a matter of what is the proper role of the federal government. Private charities are better able to address this.

O'Reilly: Are you going to force these people into rehab? Are you going to grab them by the scruff of the neck, you going to drag them into rehab?
Are you willing to do that? It's an individual problem Col. It's an individual addiction or mental illness - and in order to solve that problem you have to force him, and nobodies willing to do that in this country.

Hunt: I think we ought to try.

Like the typical little jack-booted thug that he is, O'Reilly views this in martial terms. In his demented world you would have to force these people into rehab facilities, go running around with butterfly nets and big trucks - gather them up and take them to the big scary building on the hill.

Lock them away.

He never considers the idea of taking the treatment to them. He never considers the power of positive persuasian, or the use of Intervention to help someone make a positive choice and how other veterans who've survived the same difficulties might be best suited reach out to these people.

Nope. Can't do that. To him it's all force, just like when he was shoving the Obama staffer around.

The ironic thing is that it was the use of force that put us in this situation in the first place.

If we're truly going to talk about the route causes of this problem, we have to look no further than Ronald Reagan, and the explosion of homelessness that took place on his watch.

... many homeless rights activists say the single most devastating thing Reagan did to create homelessness was when he cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by three-quarters, from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion by 1988. The department was the main governmental supporter of subsidized housing for the poor. Add this to Reagan’s overhaul of tax codes to reduce incentives for private developers to create low-income homes and you had a major crisis for low-income families and individuals. Under Reagan, the number of people living beneath the federal poverty line rose from 24.5 million in 1978 to 32.5 million in 1988.

CAROL FENNELLY (Director of Hope House in Washington): You know, I remember the month that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president. Our soup line, which would grow from the beginning of the month to a short line, to a large line by the end of the month, and then it would drop down when people got their small checks or whatever. At the first part of the month, it could get small again and grow up through the end of the month. But that first month, it was almost as if there was some cosmic energy out there, you know, telling us what was coming in the future, but the first of the month rolled around and the line didn’t get shorter. It stayed the same. It grew and grew and grew and the soup lines just went around the block in those years. I mean it, was a very difficult time. There were not enough services. We were literally claiming people off streets who had frozen to death in Detroit and, you know, in the industrialized states like Michigan. People who were out of work went into double digit unemployment.

The Republicans Hero Ronald Reagan, starting when he was governor of California, closed state supported mental institutions, closed treatment facilities and put people in need of care out on the street. He took the responsibility away from the government, and put it on the "individual" and private charities who of course were completely unsuited to handle the problem.

And frankly, that hasn't changed all that much in the last 30-years as Anderson Cooper documents, (repeating what was shown in Michael Moore's SiCKO) the dumping of homeless people on the streets of downtown L.A. by Kaiser Permanente.

There's nothing about this that doesn't stink. It's not just embarissing, it's Criminal. It's a Moral Outrage that we can't make sure that anyone who has served their country should ever have to worry - regardless of the reason - about becoming homeless.

There's no excuse.

None.

We should do what we have to do, whatever it takes. There should be no question, no hesitation, no ARGUMENT.

O'Reilly should be fucking ashamed of himself.

Vyan