7.21.2006 ||> Humans are the new animals
Guess what's new in Las Vegas? You can't feed the homeless in parks, because by feeding these people, it draws them to the parks and makes the parks unsuitable to decent families to go there for picnics and such.
The Las Vegas City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday that bans providing food or meals to the indigent for free or a nominal fee in parks.
The measure is an attempt to stop so-called "mobile soup kitchens" from operating in parks, where residents say they attract the homeless and render the city facilities unusable by families.
This measure sounds much like the ordinances also instituted in parks like, don't feed the bears (or racoons or any other animal). Apparently, when you become homeless, you no longer exist as a citizen of the United States, or a human being for that matter. You become a rodent, who should not be around normal people because you will spread disease. But what is a homeless person? What do you have to look like to become the city's new brand of untouchable?
The city's new ordinance, which officials could begin enforcing as early as Friday, defines an indigent as a "person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance" from the government under state law.Wow. It's good that the people of Las Vegas have such a mayor on their side, to protect them from things they don't like to see. Like their more downtrodden fellow citizens.
Mayor Oscar Goodman, who has been a vocal advocate of cracking down on the homeless in city parks, dismissed questions about how marshals, who patrol city parks, will identify the homeless in order to enforce the ordinance, the violation of which would be a misdemeanor.
"Certain truths are self-evident," Goodman said. "You know who's homeless."
Labels: politics
(Taken from the free internets - not my original material)
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging granola cruncher fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is relatively clean because some environmentalist wacko fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to unionize.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary
misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because godless liberals wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was
educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work because again, those same liberal union workers got the work day cut down from 12 hours long so that Joe could have an evening to see his family in. With this time, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that these good conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives!
After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
Labels: politics
