Libs need to learn that more often than not poor people are victims of their own actions and choices.
Posted on 02/26/2006 6:22:30 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Now we judge the success of a government program by how few people it helps. By that definition, President Bush was right. Brownie really was doing a heckuva job at FEMA.Forget about homicides, rapes and armed robberies. The police have far more important priorities. Someone is stealing our garbage.
The great thing for the police is that solving these crimes doesn't take a lot of crack detective work. These heinous crimes are being carried out in broad daylight, and the perpetrators very seldom have getaway cars.
They are urban poor people walking boldly down the street with enormous plastic bags full of cans slung over their shoulders or pushing shopping carts piled high with multiple bags of this valuable loot.
The shopping carts are stolen property, too, not to mention those large refrigerator boxes that some of these people turn into plush condos for sleeping during these cool Wisconsin nights.
These poor people think they can waltz up and down our alleys, eat food out of our trash containers and then make off with our most valuable garbage, aluminum cans that have a street value of 75 cents a pound.
Well, the police are out to put a stop to crime in the streets (and alleys).
Milwaukee Municipal Judge Jim Gramling, a judge with a social conscience, told Journal Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl that he has seen a parade of poor people in front of him recently charged with stealing garbage.
Gramling, who unfortunately is retiring from the bench, said he routinely voids these tickets, which carry a fine of $122. He said he's seen police pile multiple charges onto poor people, including a $300 fine for failure to obtain a junk dealer's license.
Doesn't Gramling realize these people are committing a horrible crime by stealing our garbage? The police are trying to put a stop to it. I forget why.
We weren't really using those cans any more. But it must be the principle of the thing. When we put our cans out in the alley, we expect them to be picked up and taken to a recycling center.
Actually that's what alley scavengers are doing. They pick up the cans and take them to a recycling center that pays them 75 cents a pound for collecting about a gazillion.
In my neighborhood, we actually could use a few more freelancers. Our garbage is collected every week, but our recycling bin has been known to sit brimming with cans and newspapers for months. Old, yellowing editions of the New York Times with headlines about the Titanic curl out the top.
So the cans are getting recycled, and along the way a hard-working poor person might be able to feed his family.
People who dress up in nice suits and work in tall buildings don't work anywhere near as hard as someone who spends all day hauling enormous bags filled with cans up and down alleys.
Let's see. At 75 cents a pound, you only have to collect a hundred pounds to earn a whopping $75. You could live on that for days.
Kin Hubbard, one of those homespun humorists in my home state of Indiana, used to say that being poor is no crime, but it might as well be.
Increasingly, we criminalize the act of being poor. It may be an aesthetic thing. We don't like to see poor people. Not only do they wear unfashionable and even unsightly clothes, but they painfully remind us of their existence.
When we ended welfare in this country, we told ourselves we were doing poor people a great, big favor by forcing them to get jobs. But, of course, most of the jobs we provided for them did not pay enough to lift them and their families out of poverty.
Still, we told ourselves welfare reform was a tremendous success because we slashed the welfare rolls. It was an entirely new way to define the success of a government program.
We used to judge the success of a government program by the number of people it helped. Now we judge the success of a government program by how few people it helps.
By that definition, President Bush was right. Brownie really was doing a heckuva job at FEMA. The more people Michael Brown allowed to die in the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the fewer people the Federal Emergency Management Agency had to provide services.
But this entire plan of keeping poor people out of sight and forgetting about them is destroyed if we have to see and hear poor folks rattling carts through our alleys stealing garbage.
We haven't quite reached the point of Mexico City, where entire families live in an enormous dump outside the city waiting for the garbage that sustains them to be delivered.
So our poor people have to go out and get their own garbage. You could call that entrepreneurship and the American way. Or you could call it a crime.
But I'm sure just the fact that he recognizes a problem while doing nothing about it makes him morally superior to the rest of us. *Rolleyes*
These sanctimonious snots must all learn how to write this tripe out of the same book. They all sound alike, and think they're witty.
I'm sure if Judge Gramling could find a way to make somebody actually pay those fines,. he would not void the tickets. Maybe he should force smarmy liberal columnists to contribute to a fund to pay the tickets. The liberals could take aluminum cans to a recycling center to raise money for the cause.
We haven't? All, of Mexico city is already here isn't it? Aren't they those poor illegals who are driving around in brand new pickups and SUV's?
Libs need to learn that more often than not poor people are victims of their own actions and choices.
The article is retarded but so is ticketing people for collecting cans and eating trash.
I can't stand the tone of the article. But I do think there are better things for the police to do than ticket scavengers and take up court time with these type charges. I see nothing wrong with people, be they poor or wealthy, collecting cans from trash or scavenging through our throwaways on "big trash" day. We live in the country and tend to have large piles on the big day, people come by and take what they want and I have no problem with that, it is just being recycled rather than put into a land fill. Most of the pickers are people who make their living by reselling our junk as collectibles or antiques.
Most liberals have never heard of identity theft, and wouldn't care anyway.
Funny comment you make, but more true than you imagine. Where I live, they used to arrest the poor people who would drive up and down the allys to see what goodies they could get. The city said that they were stealing recyclables and that the city was losing revenue. Ok, so far so good, right? Well, then it appears that lots of illegal aliens figured out that we rich gringos throw lots of good stuff away and so they came, entire families hanging off of old chevy trucks. Guess what? The city now says that it would be wrong to stop these people from recycling things that they find in the trash. lesson from this story?
American bums trash digging is bad.
Mexican trashdiggers are good.
I was always under the impression that once something is placed 'on the curb' as garbage...it becomes available for public use. Hence law enforcement officials not needing a warrant for going through trash. Am I wrong here?
Aluminum cans are the only items it makes environmental sense to recycle since they have value in the marketplace. Why can't we put out our aluminum cans and let anyone who wants to collect them? Isn't that the free market in action. It's also making poor people businessmen instead of vagrants.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
In the Houston area, bums can get 3 hot meals a day and a warm dry bed if they WISH and have absolutely no personal responsibilities at all.
And thanks to liberalism, now the mentally challenged are walking the streets instead of being institutionalized where they could receive the treatment they deserve.
Except care to hear something even funnier?
We have a bunch of illegals living behind us in one home.
Whenever we put our garbage can out on pickup days the illegals behind us have so many boxes of new items they purchased they want to dispose of they have no room for the boxes in their trashbin so they come across the alley and place them in our bin.
Yep, thats a good one. Its quite interesting to see the underbelly of society at work. At a recent project I took part in we did work 24/7. Well at night, since this was a commercial zone, the homeless would come out. I happened to be on the third floor which was not yet complete so I could see out perfectly all around me. The homeless work in packs and communicate by whistles. It was amazing seeing them like a pack of wolves just waiting for someone to drop some morsel. Most interesting part of it was as the manager of the site, the police would come to me and tell me to get rid of the homeless. They werent even on our property, sheesh.
It would be a great excuse if caught going through someone's trash, looking for personal information. "I was only looking for cans to recycle".
Cops come reluctantly to answer complaints. So, there is a whole other side to this, especially if there are laws, too.
Street people should be required to have jobs. Not hard jobs, not jobs that would require you to think. Just something easy like "journalist".
Yes, we are much more evolved, we warehouse our untouchables in drug ridden, crime filled tenemants in exchange for their voting Democrat.
I'd rather live in an enormous dump outside the city than vote Democrat, at least I'd have my dignity.
I have no issue with people who want to drop out of society and be left alone. They should move to wilderness or empty farmland and fend for themselves.
There are people who want to do that, and the government won't leave them alone. They must work only to pay taxes, or have their property taxed, etc.
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