Editorial: Turning back the clock

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, people without jobs or money often ended up at the poorhouse, sometimes called the County Home or County Poor Farm. They did not always end up there of their own free will.

County sheriffs or deputies were known to pick up impecunious people off the street and deposit them indefinitely at the poorhouse on the grounds that, as beggars, bums and tramps, they were community eyesores. Once there, hard labor would earn them food and a place to sleep.

Today penniless people without jobs who reside on the streets have a more dignified label, homeless, and they have all the rights afforded to the community's most prominent citizens, including the mayor.

We just wish Mayor Oscar Goodman would get this through his head. During his time in office homeless people have been swept off the streets like so much trash. He has insulted them, deprived them of needed programs and has suggested they be carted off to an abandoned prison.

Thursday, at his weekly press conference, Goodman yearned for the old days of forced labor at poorhouses. He announced that he has directed the city attorney to research the constitutionality of a law that would allow him to waive the rights of "service-resistant" homeless people and place them in an institution.

As Sun columnist Jon Ralston wrote in his daily e-mail report, Goodman says he wants to "explore a law where we take them ... even if they don't want to go. I want the ability to help those who don't want to help themselves."

What Goodman actually wants is to turn back the clock, to a time when the moneyed class had all the rights and the poor were treated as if the U.S. Constitution and basic human rights did not exist. Strange words from a man who professes to be leading Las Vegas toward the day when it can rightfully be called a "world-class city."