The Barometer Online

The headlines are more and more common. From Bend: "Teen hits, kicks, and stomps homeless man to death." From Keizer: "Homeless woman suffocated." From Corvallis: "Teens brutally beat homeless man to death." These incidents occurred in 2004, as detailed in a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless.

One of the biggest struggles I face when deciding what to write about here is the fact that I've been keeping an online journal since I was 15. There's kind of an expectation, when you're published any wider than that, then you're supposed to have all the answers to any question you want to raise.

There are some things that just cannot be ignored. Things that are happening in the world that people don't mean to ignore, but seem to be left out of the list of important issues. This Saturday I was doing my usual weekend routine, browsing CNN.com, as lame as that may seem for a Saturday morning.

Seattle's taxpayers are saving money one way - reducing emergency room visits by 90 percent, but don't agree with how it is being done. According to The Associated Press a four-story building was built in 2005 by the Downtown Emergency Service Center. The $11 million project was funded by donations and public money.

I was going through my pre-writing rituals, cracking my knuckles, pouring coffee, adjusting the key-board height and finally checking-in on the story I've been following. I was going to be a good little snarky liberal, and take pot-shots at a holy grail of the status quo, fully confident that a minority of similarly minded righteously indignant comrades would appreciate my prose with sarcastic mock disapprovals.