I don't need anything else...
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
|
Locked on 04/21/2010 6:06:01 PM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason:
Locked. |
Posted on 01/27/2005 12:50:51 PM PST by Dashing Dasher
Kelly Namowicz has a plan for the rest of her life.
"I want to go the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco," she says. "I want to be a professional chef."
But until now, there were 14 things standing in her way: tattoos that once almost covered her hands and arms, forcing her to wear long sleeves to job interviews to avoid being stigmatized.
"People judge you," Namowicz says. "People don't want to admit it, but it happens."
Now, the tattoos are almost gone, thanks to a city program called Clean Slate. It pays for laser treatments that erase the tattoos, and help wipe away the past. Namowicz says her kids helped her decide to do it.
"I want to be that positive role model for them," she says.
Now in its tenth year, Clean Slate is targeted at helping young people turn their lives around.
"You've got to be 14 to 25, live in San Jose, and you have to have gang-related tattoos in the exposed parts of the body," said project coordinator Juan Avila. "That's hands, neck, wrist, face, arms."
That made Victor Guizar a prime candidate. Just 24 years old, Victor has been incarcerated for a third of his life -- beginning at age 13. He has tattoos on his arms, chest, neck, and head. He even shows us some in his mouth. Most of his tattoos he got behind bars, and almost all are gang related. But he's leaving that life behind because most of his friends are drug addicts, in prison, or dead.
"I told my homies, 'My life is going to be different now,'" he says. "They said, 'We've been waiting for that.'"
The procedure just takes a few minutes. It stings, and leaves a mark like a sunburn that eventually wears off. But people like Victor Guizar say it's a small price to pay for starting over.
I don't need anything else...
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
So it's the proper role of government to pay this out? Or make loans?
> So, that's the proper use of tax money or not?
Followed up by a bill the laser-ee gets to pay once he/she gets a job... sure.
Better that than the alternative, it seems. You'll be paying for these yahoos one way or the other, so...
Here is the complete article
Thu, January 27, 2005
Cons get cheap tattoos
PILOT PROJECT WILL COST TAXPAYERS $3.7 MILLION, TORY MP SAYS
By ALAN CAIRNS, TORONTO SUN
A $3.7-MILLION, six-year pilot project that gives Canada's prison inmates dirt-cheap tattoos is a "ludicrous" expenditure of taxpayer funds, a Tory MP said yesterday. Correctional Services Canada (CSC) will install tattoo parlours in six prisons in a bid to stop the spread of HIV and hepatitis C through the use of dirty tattoo needles.
Inmates will get a two-hour prison tattoo session for $5.
"The people who are really sick across Canada must wonder what we are thinking about when we subsidize inmates for something that is totally unnecessary," Tory MP Randy White said.
HEALTH CARE
"This is presented by CSC as some kind of health-care program ... when Canadians with diabetes have to go out and buy their own needles," he said.
For years, CSC reports have concluded that a greater percentage of people in the federal prison population have tested positive for AIDS antibodies or other serious blood diseases than in the general Canadian population.
White believes most federal prisoners who have the diseases contracted them either through sex or by using dirty needles to inject drugs such as heroin.
CSC officials have told White they are following prison tattoo practices developed in Australia and Portugal but he cannot find any evidence of similar programs in those countries, he said.
White also ridiculed CSC's plan to staff the tattoo parlours with inmates.
"Not only will we subsidize the inmates to get tattoos, but we will pay inmates to staff the parlours," he said, adding CSC has agreed to pay inmate tatooists the going in-prison job rate of $5 to $6 an hour.
PLAN ADOPTED?
White said the annual cost of prison tattoo parlours will reach $611,000 in the first year, which means a cost of almost $3.7 million over the duration of the six-year pilot.
If the plan is adopted, which White says it almost certainly will be, and goes into Canada's 53 prisons, taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $5 million each year, White said.
"I've never seen a pilot project yet that didn't continue."
White challenged CSC to show him "one study that says this is a good idea."
White wonders how the feds can use the health protection argument to give inmates subsidized tattoos and not extend that service to "citizens who have not committed crimes."
Oh god, not YOU Tonto!
Man, I AM getting old!
"Your local tax dollars at work...."
Well...at least they are being used for something that at least has some POTENTIAL of benefitting society in some way, shape, or form...
New York for one.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for the kid?
He's the idiot that got a foreign language TATTOOED on his arm...it's not like he got it embossed on a t-shirt for crying out loud...FFS...if you want a tattoo that says love, then get one that says "Love"
"People judge you," Namowicz says. "People don't want to admit it, but it happens."
Fair game, I'd say. When you get a tattoo, you're saying something about yourself. You knew full well what the tattoos symbolized when you got them.
I can't believe I didn't mention anything about the tagline before....
I'll admit it freely: if someone has made a conscious decision to mark up their body in order to send the message that they're a badass little gangsta, I am going to take that into account when I judge them. Is that somehow unfair?
When did people get the idea that nobody should ever judge for any reason???
Great advice!
I sure hate to see young women with tattoos. and body piercings are even more stupid.
Hey! It's Frisco. Would you rather they'd spend on AIDS medicine?
The bad part is that Dave Barry had tattoo removal slotted as one the career paths of the future. If its being done by bureaucrats can it pay that much?
So the proper role of government is to loan money out?
Better that than the alternative, it seems. You'll be paying for these yahoos one way or the other, so...
That wasn't the question. And as long as so called conservatives give into liberals, there won't be a choice.
Every single liberal government program I have heard of can be justified by that thinking. The entire welfare state in fact.
Dave Barry predicted that years ago. Said it would happen when Gen Xer's kids started asking them why they had pictures on their butts.
But, isn't that why they got the tattoo in the first place? They wanted to be "judged" as cool or hip or whatever! They wanted to have people know at a glance that they are with this gang or that gang.
So - NOW they don't want to be judged?
PS... I admit it - I judge people based on the large tattoo on their head and the number of piercings visible while fully clothed. So shoot me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.