Posted on 12/04/2012 7:43:52 AM PST by from occupied ga
Melissa Hines was the first person through the door when home heating help became available Monday morning.
Hundreds of people were bundled up behind her in the dark, hoping to get help paying their heating bills.
The Macon-Bibb County Economic Opportunity Council accepted applications from the first 250 people in the line, which stretched around St. Paul AME Church at 7 a.m. It’s part of a nationwide energy assistance program.
Each person approved for the assistance will receive between $310 and $350, depending on income and family size, said Jimmie Samuel, the council’s executive director.
Hines camped out starting at 9 p.m. Saturday night. When church began Sunday, she moved to a gas station across the street and returned when services were over.
Hines ate salad and hard-boiled eggs from a cooler. She kept entertained by watching “Blade,” “Saw III” and a Harry Potter movie on a portable DVD player.
Disabled after nine foot surgeries, a back problem and other medical issues, Hines lives on a fixed income and needs the money to help keep her heater on.
The council provided portable toilets for the men and women who lined up in advance. Fast food bags, coffee cups and other trash littered the church grounds.
Although people are asked not to camp out, they inevitably do, Samuel said.
Still, he said the first-come, first-served system is better than a lottery.
Applicants ages 65 and older lined up for assistance last month. Homebound applicants are handled on a case-by-case basis, Samuel said.
But waiting for hours in the cold was too much for Rene Tompkins.
“My time is limited on this line,” she said, explaining that she wasn’t able to take care of her ill sister while she waited in line, only to be turned away. “If they’d taken another 50 people, I would have been in.”
Tompkins is a former project manager for the New York City Parks and Recreation Department who moved south more than a decade ago. In Macon, she worked as a cashier at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame until she became disabled and unable to work.
She said she won’t be lining up for heating assistance again.
Sally West also camped out hoping to get help, but she was turned away before she was in sight of the door.
West, who became disabled after injuring her back in a car accident nine years ago, needed a walker to help her as she stood in line.
She arrived about 3 p.m. Sunday and stood in line with classmates from Virginia College, where she’s training to be a medical assistant. She’s got six months left and then she hopes she’ll be able to work again.
West said she’ll be back Friday morning when the assistance program takes more applications starting at 7 a.m.
“You’ve got to keep trying,” she said
I wonder how much of that money will be spent on liquor, smokes, or lottery tickets?
Just a wild guess on my part, but I'd guess somewhere between 100% and all of it.
Boortz also mentioned the people who say they need help and they have a 50” TV and X-Boxes...
Over the years Ive visited people who claim they needed food etc and I learnt years ago to look around their house...
Big TV cigarettes, extravagant extras they are paying off...
Ive told them to let the freezer and big TV go back so they didnt have to pay the monthly amount on those and stop buying cigarettes then they could afford to buy food for their children and pay their electric bill...
Oh Nana youre SOOOO MEEEEEEEEEEEAN...
Yeah
and while I was at one house the man of the house came home with bags of KFC ...
\
all the extras included..
I pointed out to he and his wife that they had spent about a weeks worth of food money on that one meal ...
another house the Ice Cream man came down the street...
The woman managede to find some $20 bills ande gave one of the children one to buy ice cream for all of them...
Its amazing what can go on right in front of you...
Did i say the man with the childken weas driving a fairly new expensive cart ???
Did I say I asked if it was paid for ???
of course I asked...
Im nosy...as well as MEAN..
No it wasnt ...
that was another worry...
the monthly payment was much higher than a cheaper car would have been...
Dont ever be afraid or too “nice” to ask when someone comes with the “need”
Churches should be part of a network to stop the mooches from going from one of them to another...
in a network they call other churches to describe the people and what they are driving...
One trick is to send Mom in at one chuirch and then an hour later or less Dad goes into the church down the street for the same so called need ...
always make sure you get to see the whole family before you help them..
those 3 children “at home” may be old enough to work or they may not even be living with the parents...
yes its not unChristian to tell someone to sell or just take that big TV back to the store...
Its wisdom and bei9ng a good steward over your money...
Tell them even Booker T Washington said that rich people should just give because they are asked...
Oh bad MEAN Booker T...
Oops..
Tell them even Booker T Washington said that rich people should NOT just give because they are asked...
Oh bad MEAN Booker T...
” If this a$$hole brok into our houses and stole directly from us we’d shoot her. (Southern speak, “shoot her dead.”) but instead we pay our taxes and work harder..”
Yet if you refuse to pay your taxes, then you could be imprisoned. If you don’t voluntarily show up for your imprisonment, they will come to your door. If you refuse to answer the door, they will kick it in. If you continue to resist, they will SHOOT you.
So, the state is willing to shoot you for not giving the theif your property!
Sadly true.
Melissa Hines sounds like the fattest pig in the sty, doesn’t she?
She wants her Obama stash, but she certainly avoided the church during services.
Do you think she has any gratitude about it at all??
Of course not.
Have you ever noticed how the “poor” feel entitled. Last month I was filling my car at the QT when some guy pulled up behind my and asked if I could spare him ten bucks for gas. I told him I could but I wouldn’t. The look on his face was kind of astonished. He moved on to the next person, and I didn’t pay any attention to the outcome of that transaction.
The state is willing to shoot you for not complying with their will.
I have walked many a lib-in-denial down this path before. They (most of them) absolutely REFUSE to acknowledge this sticky little fact about empowering the state to impose liberal policy.
I ask “are you willing to shoot me if I don’t comply?”.
Usually I get “don’t be absurd”. But they are empowering and giving their approval for someone else to shoot me if I don’t comply.
I’ll walk them down the series of events that lead to such a shooting, and usually I’ll get “well, you wouldn’t have been shot if you didn’t resist”.
My reply is “I also wouldn’t have been shot if the state would have given up trying to make me comply.”
The biggest attraction of liberalism is feeling good about oneself as a “good person” without any effort,
so pointing out that they are condoning violence completely negates their worldview. They refuse to go there.
She's certainly the quickest pig to start sucking on the teat. When I was growing up we used to feed the hogs all sorts of windfall apples in late summer and early fall, and the pigs scarfed down every scrap. Little did they know. Unfortunately this analogy breaks down with parasites like Hines.
I am not so sure. These pigs are bein fattened up for something. metaphorically speaking.
They're being fattened up for their continued Democratic vote to keep the annointed one and his ilk in power. Pretty sure I wouldn't want to eat something like that anyway. Long pig is kind of out of favor these days.
Still doesn't matter; I don't have an extra $50 laying around for a portable time-waster, either. :-)
Mine was but that was in the middle of summer with temps around 110 and no rain in sight. Funny how everyone and their dog gets freebies for heat (or if in cash, more dvd movies) but no help with A/C. It's just as well they don't or that'd be something else to raise my blood pressure.
I had a case a few years ago where a guy with an empty gas can came up to me one evening and asked for money...
I asked him where his car was...
He said and I asked him why he had walked passed 2 gas stations to get where he was, about 1/2 mile from where he told me his car was parked..
I then told him since it was a ways back to his car I would buy him some gas at the station just 2 blocks back and drive him to his car...
Do you know he said he couldnt go right then, he didnt have time and he had to keep going the way he was walking to visit his mother in the hospital ???
I said come back when he had walked the mile to the hospital and back and wed talk about gas some more...
a woman standing near called me names and gave him money...
I said to her face she was stupid...
My wife has two friends whom I utterly detest. They both constantly poor mouth, but they likewise stint themselves nothing. Every possible cable TV option. Not a new Chevrolet, but a new Lexus (and a Mercedes for the other one) every time the lease runs out. Eat out several times a week. One has two dogs. Both retired just as soon as they hit the minimum requirements. As far as I know neither is actually on means tested assistance, but only because they’re afraid of getting caught for fraud if they tried it. (actually I only know that about one of them. Haven’t heard anything about the other for a couple of years) Both spend every penny they have as soon as they get their hands on it. The one that I still know about husband’s mother died and they came into an inheritance of some sort about three years ago. Went on elaborate vacations for about a year. After that I think the money ran out because she went back to complaining about how broke she was. Frankly if I saw either of them starving in the street I wouldn’t give them the time of day.
That's a standard scam. Got that one pulled on me in West Palm over thanksgiving. Naturally, I said no. Saw the guy about 20 minutes later pedaling his bicycle to the another filling station. He didn't even have a gas can.
The guy at the QT here in GA actually did have a car. He just expected to bum money for gas. then there was the bum that asked me for a dollar to go toward buying some wine. I gave him a dollar for honesty.
Over $300/month? WTH?
At worst I hit that in the coldest months in GA when heating a 2500 sq ft home with lousy insulation.
Absolute worst heating bill I ever had was in NY when a thermostat stuck on and ran the electric heater full bore for a month while I was gone - and that was just $400!
I grew up in NY with wood heat. My bedroom got COLD; throw on another blanket or sweater already.
I had a guy pull the “I need gas” line on me.
Seven years later I encountered him still working that scam on the same block.
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