Liberals love to spend public money on cleaning the environment and taking care of the poor. Often, that pits them against business owners and taxpayers. For example, Ventura was eager to ban plastic bags and install parking meters to make the city more "environmentally sustainable." That's an easy choice for liberals to make.

What happens, though, when the poor trample on the environment? What does the environmentally conscious city do when homeless people set up permanent camps in a river bed?

Considering that Ventura faces daily environmental fines of $25,000, it's not much of a choice. Get the tractors and say goodbye, homeless people.

Not surprisingly, that upsets liberal homeless activists like the pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura.

The Rev. Jan Christian of Unitarian Universalist Church echoed the call for a year-round shelter. She voiced frustration that the city continues to pour thousands of dollars into cleanup efforts like Tuesday's, rather than using the money, time and energy for permanent solutions.

"This is a shell game. No one argues that many of these people will be back here," she said. "We can all do better than this."

I think we can do better too, but the solution is to let charities such as churches help the homeless, instead of churches asking the government to spend more of their dwindling dollars.