In a classical political pincers movement, Bush’s piratical banksters busted the economy, and the Obamunists are prolonging the misery. The result is more poor people on the streets.
I have sympathy for those down on their luck, but there is a dedicated core of homeless bums who don’t want to conform to society’s rules while nonetheless mooching off of it. They were bums in the boom times. These are the hardcore drunks who won’t enter a shelter because they can’t bring their hooch with them. They are the odorous hordes lounging in the beautiful Monument Valley Park here in my fair city, conveniently next to the Marian House Soup kitchen. They hoist themselves up and flock to its doors three times a day like crows on a carcass.
Well, some cities are getting fed up…
Philadelphia recently banned outdoor feeding of people in city parks. Denver has begun enforcing a ban on eating and sleeping on property without permission. And this month, lawmakers in Ashland, Ore., will consider strengthening the town's ban on camping and making noise in public.
And the list goes on: Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City and more than 50 other cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. (USA Today – Cities Crack Down)And it’s about damned time. My city passed an anti-camping ordinance back in 2010, and we’re better for it, although the most incorrigible “campers” now lounge tentless in many of the same areas. To the dismay of liberals, not one homeless person died of exposure due to our new law. Many went into shelters, and we bussed others back to their hometowns or to kin who could take care of them, as it should be.
My wife and I donate to charities, and the good ones help willing people get back on the path to self-sufficiency. Bob Kote’s Step 13 is one of the best, helping people clean up and help themselves. They only take in people willing to stay sober and go to work. If you’re not willing to do that, they can’t help you.
For a clear-eyed take on all this, I recommend George Orwell’s short essay, The Spike...
At six, the gates swung open and we shuffled in. An official at the gate entered our names and other particulars in the register and took our bundles away from us. The woman was sent off to the workhouse, and we others into the spike. It was a gloomy, chilly, limewashed place, consisting only of a bathroom and dining-room and about a hundred narrow stone cells. The terrible Tramp Major met us at the door and herded us into the bathroom to be stripped and searched. He was a gruff, soldierly man of forty, who gave the tramps no more ceremony than sheep at the dipping-pond, shoving them this way and that and shouting oaths in their faces... (George Orwell, The Spike)
