Posted on 09/25/2013 6:30:55 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Indianapolis offers the full urban deal: great architecture, hot restaurants, famous museums and a walkable downtown. It also has had one of the worst panhandler problems I’ve seen. At almost every street corner, it seemed, someone was squeezing you for money.
In August, Indianapolis joined numerous other cities that have attempted to curb aggressive begging. And as has happened elsewhere, the American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a suit.
“The ACLU of Indiana,” its executive director, Jane Henegar, said, “believes in the power of the First Amendment to give everyone a voice, even when those voices confront us with our greatest challenges, such as poverty and homelessness.”
Defenders of panhandling commonly portray these laws as heartless campaigns to remove ragged people — the homeless, vagrants, loiterers and beggars — from the public’s view.
No doubt many businesses struggling to revive their downtown want these people gone. Courts have also identified another right — to use public streets without being confronted with demands for money. Depending on urban comfort levels, people’s response may vary from guilty compliance to mild annoyance to feeling threatened.
We’re talking about the future of urban America. As cities became repositories of the poor, the will to preserve their nice public things, be they libraries or parks, withered. As John Kenneth Galbraith put it, the nation became a land of “private affluence” and “public squalor.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Portland is now being sued for stopping aggressive panhandling on median strips at stoplights.
I am so tired of leftists.
What is that machine?
A credit card acceptor.
A credit card acceptor.
They can put a credit card swiper on an Iphone these days... maybe some ObamaPhones will come with them??
a credit card acceptor?
Oh my!
We see quite a few claiming to be Vietnam Veterans. Hubby would quiz them and said he never found a real one, funny thing about that is hubby and his friends are getting older...the panhandlers that claim they were in Vietnam are getting younger. Hubby told one of them he needed to claim a more recent war...
what's the point?
seriously, people shopping or taking in a movie or eating out do not want to see or hear or smell these people...some of them defecate on the street....they fight....they use offensive words....
what rights do businesses and citizens have that are civilized and clean....apparently none....
I have never seen that one, I have seen signs that they want the money for booze. It is surprising how many that ask for money for booze get a chuckle and some money. Those that want money for food don’t seem to do as well, I imagine people think they really want it for booze and won’t give it to them. I saw a segment once where a reporter watched a panhandler at an airport and estimated he made $300 the day he watched him...that amazed me...
Hispanics are funny about that, rarely do I see one panhandling. They will sell tamales or something. They will however get on government assistance, use the ER for medical care and not pay and so on. Many seem to not have a problem with that.
The only way to defeat an enemy is to be meaner than them. We stopped doing that long ago.
“Have never seen a beggar and almost every male has a job or a business and MUCH nicer cars than I have at this point in time.”
Most of the Hispanics in my area are Peruvian, Ecuadoran, Puerto Rican, and Dominican; the young ones from the Caribbean are into cars (and the older ones from that area are into old American cars), while the South Americans drive cars like mine (whatever will get them from A to B). I know many Hispanics breed without marriage and therefore benefit from freebies, but they also have a work ethic (that breeding out of wedlock is becoming very common with whites in my area as well).
“Do they replace the beggars or merely dilute the beggars?”
They are replacing them; they are taking over the housing in which the beggars had lived.
“That is interesting, and actually a hopeful view.”
I believe they are being imported to replace our permanent underclass for exactly that reason; the current unassimilated underclass has no hope, and will always attribute their failure to race.
“I am a volunteer with the homeless and have yet to see a Mexican come in for the free meal. Of course, they have jobs,”
I believe it about the free meals.
In my area the work for them has dried up; nobody has any money left with which to pay them, and the Americans now have plenty of time to cut their own grass (I’m not kidding).
“Hispanics are funny about that, rarely do I see one panhandling. They will sell tamales or something. They will however get on government assistance, use the ER for medical care and not pay and so on. Many seem to not have a problem with that.”
You’re right, and I do have a problem with that. I guess it is the lesser of two evils; you’d rather have the moocher who gets out of bed every morning and does something productive. The trick is to get them on to the tax rolls so they can contribute something towards their own bennies.
My wife ran across one with a sign saying that he would "work for food", she went to a nearby Hardee's and bought a bag of burgers and fries and a soft drink and took it to him, she told me the man took the bag, sat down on the curb and ate it like he hadn't eaten in days. My wife, ever the old softee, cried about that one.
Yep. I actyally got “burned” by that at a Salvation Army bell ringer three years ago. I said, do you take plastic. She said, “Yes, I do.”
I had to help her figure out how to use the machine, though. :-)
he should change it to “bet you can’t hit me with a quarter”
not that I give to beggars, but I have given money to strangers begging for gas money in the parking lot of stores...even tried to find the guy and give him more but I couldn't.....
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