Regarding Burley’s murky loitering laws

Rough draft for October submission to Times-News

With the way the law is written, Henry David Thoreau probably would have been charged with remaining idle in essentially one location, including the concept of spending time idly; being dilatory; lingering, staying; sauntering; delaying; standing around, and hanging around Walden’s Pond (and loving it). Even though Thoreau authored the classic Civil Disobedience, I am not sure that following his own advice would get him very far outside the prison bar, in these, our post Thomas Pained, weary hobo daze.

I wonder if it would help the cause of any weary burley hoboes to show that they hold a two-pole permit, while fishing beside Walden Pond-like Idaho waters. How can you be guilty of loitering, when it is clear you are a multitasking fisherperson? It’s also interesting now, about how being homeless is either against the law, or on the cusp of being against the law, in so many communities.

In some areas, we now have more foreclosed homes than we do homeless people. Fortunately, there are some community leaders in a handful of places around the country, who see what a crisis our Nation is in and have gained enough empathy to lighten the laws and / or enforcement of laws regarding squatter’s rights, etc.

Of course, a few bad squatters or actors portraying squatters could give these modern dust bowl communities a bad name as dreadful as Detroit. If we want to see real change by lessening the loitering ratios, then our police should round up all the homeless and corral them down to the nearest voter registration booths, so they may free themselves from the stagnant waters in which our murky Country has been lingering.

Footnote: “RISE TO VOTE SIR” is this season’s perfect palindrome.

Final result: http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2008/10/08/opinion/letters/doc48ebed824c814930609161.txt