‘Felony stupid’: CA Republicans clash after candidate’s homeless stunt

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/felony-stupid-ca-republicans-clash-after-candidates-homeless-stunt/



GOP CA gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari

‘Felony stupid’: CA Republicans clash after candidate’s homeless stunt
Arturo Garcia
22 Sep 2014

California Republicans squabbled this past weekend over their gubernatorial candidate’s attempt to simulate life as a homeless person, LA Weekly reported.

The dispute between Neel Kashkari and the party’s nominee for state controller, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, allegedly dates back to this past July, when Kashkari spent a week living in Fresno as a homeless person while trying to find a job. At one point, he is shown sleeping on a bench near City Hall.

“I came here to Fresno expecting to be able to find a job and take care of myself,” Kashkari said in a video documenting his experiences. “But it’s been a week, and I’ve found nothing.”

LA Weekly reported that at the time of the video’s release, Kashkari’s campaign was $164,000 in debt. Real Clear Politics currently shows Kashkari trailing incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown (D) by 18 percentage points.

[daredtowork]

1. I'd like to see some politicians do this right

First: try sleeping outside for a while, under chaotic life conditions, with no hygiene supplies or clean clothes. Then when you're tired, sick from stress and eating bad food (not to mention actual diseases from exposure to the elements and other people who are sick from living in "street conditions&quot , wearing ratty clothes, and smell to high heaven...go try to find a job.

Oh I forgot: you have no phone, no way to copy a resume (or to keep it safely if you can get it copied at some "employment center&quot , and no transportation subsidy to be able to get to job interviews.

I hate it when politicians claim they've "lived on food stamps" for a week or tried anything to do with being poor for a week. Because they really haven't. The main thing they don't realize is that when you're poor, nothing is done for your convenience: you are being split in a thousand different ways, caught in a thousand conflicting agency agendas, and when someone makes an error that cuts off your supply of FOOD there is no "safety net" below you while the bureaucracy just "processes its mistake over 30 days". If there's a hitch in the politician's plan to "be homeless" for a week - he just goes home that night and tries again tomorrow!

The core thing everyone needs to realize here: finding the job does not come first. No one will hire you in that condition. No one will want to work with you no matter what your mad programming skillz. The conditions in which you live need to be stabilized first, and you need to be relieved of toxic stress (most of which the government bureaucracies themselves are IMPOSING on the poor!) before you can even be in a position to "get a job".

By the way - see my sig for what actually happens when someone on welfare tries to work. The further ramification for me (not in the petition since it happened yet) was I lost Medi-Cal as well: the very thing that was enabling me to go back to work in the first place.

[mackerel]

2. I still don't get what his point was? Was he some how showing up Gov Brown by

being homeless and not getting employed?

[daredtowork]

3. I think this performance art was about

showing that Governor Brown's policies were depriving people of jobs and making people homeless...?

Whatever it was, it was clueless about the real problem of homelessness and poverty in California. I guess he was also assuming the poor don't vote.