Posted on 12/25/2021 1:07:42 PM PST by nickcarraway
Do you, like many Americans, feel especially charitable this time of year? Enjoy helping those in need? Better buy a permit.
As Americans around the country celebrate the Giving Season, various elected officials are busy trying to put a stop to all this charitable mumbo jumbo.
In Murfreesboro, Tenn., the city council is considering a rule that would require people to obtain a permit to share food with the homeless and others in need.
"A new ordinance is being considered that limits where people can serve meals on public property, including parks and sidewalks," Nashville's Fox 17 reported last month. "The rule would require a permit each time someone hands out food, and requires people to take food safety classes before they can qualify for a permit."
Food safety classes? Really?
After immediate pushback from residents, Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland offered a flimsy defense of the proposal, arguing that "people who are showing up without notice on a piece of property that's city owned property, that's something we have to go through a process to be able to do that."
Are Murfreesboro's residents now not free to show up without notice on public property, Mr. Mayor?
Elected officials in Newark, N.J., are up to similarly vile shenanigans. After informing local aid groups recently that it would begin prohibiting them from sharing food with people in need in Newark, the city changed its tune slightly "and said that groups who give out food would need a permit and that the new rule would be specifically targeted at those who give food to the homeless," the New York Times reported last week. Wow, how generous.
What exactly has emboldened elected officials in Newark and Murfreesboro to crack down on sharing food with the homeless and less fortunate around the holidays? In truth, these cities are no outliers. Other American municipalities have been hard at work, year-round, combating charitable food donations.
I've devoted many columns to these terrible crackdowns over the years. As I've detailed, cities around the county, including Orlando, Dallas, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, Birmingham, and San Antonio, have enacted ordinances that prohibit residents from sharing food with the homeless and less fortunate. Most recently, I blasted a Charlotte, N.C., lawmaker's proposal this past summer to make sharing food with the homeless a misdemeanor there.
Houston is an almost-perpetual offender.
"Groups wanting to serve food can apply for permission from the Mayor's Office for Homeless Initiatives, which provides training prior to the permit being granted," the Houston Chronicle reported last month, in a piece focused on Houston city officials' ongoing attempts to sabotage efforts by the charitable group Food Not Bombs to share food with the homeless and others in need.
These bans are uniformly awful and indecent. They also conflict with the Constitution, I explained nearly a decade ago. Las Vegas, one of the first cities to be sued over its permitting requirements, which were rescinded as a result of a 2010 settlement, had a "ban [that] imposed steep penalties—including a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail— for anyone caught giving away food in public to more than a handful of people without a permit," I explain in my book Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable.
"No government has a right to interfere with or intercede in my otherwise legal right to express myself through my generosity," Jay Hamburger, a Houston man who's been feeding the homeless for decades, told me in remarks that also appear in my book. Hamburger's right. And even if governments had that power, it's one no decent people should exercise—during the Giving Season or any season.
These folks-are they doing it to help the homeless or are they doing it to feel good about themselves? They’re not helping them, just enabling.
You notice I’m not writing about anyones rights here? If anything the panhandling is freedom of expression. That and vagrancy laws should apply. Let the chips fall where they may.
If you feed them, they will come.
If you do feed the homeless, feed them well away from where you live.
It is a big problem for these do-gooders to go to certain parts of town and distribute free food. If you subsidize something you get more of it.
Maybe …. If they are so interested in helping …. They should take these homeless folks and bums to their own homes. Feed them there, let them take a shower and use an indoor toilet.
What’s that?
Correct! You can’t solve the problem by making the problem continue.
If you tax something you get less of it.
This is the government’s Communistic attempt to outlaw the churches’ good deeds.
Government = “much better they should eat out of the dumpster”.
The only way to ensure reliance on the government is to outlaw charity.
You can give them needles and free fentanyl, however.
“...property that’s city owned property...”
Who is “the city”???....The people...
Who owns “city owned property”???....The people...
What is “public property”???...Property owned by “the public”...
Who is “the public”???....The people...
Easy to figure out, folks...
Bingo
GMAFB. Did they go to crazy school, or are they this nuts naturally?
Never trust a government you can’t throw into prison.
Jesus Christ COMMANDS us to share food with the needy, without asking about whether we are “enabling” them, etc.!!!!
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025%3A35-40&version=ESV
There are non-government (and often Church-related) organizations in every area that help the homeless with food, clothing, shelter, etc. In many cases, they make it possible for homeless people to escape from homelessness, and become productive members of society.
Christ is born! Glorify Him!!!!
> They’re not helping them, just enabling. <
Yep, you’re right.
There is another side to this.
Nearby Seattle has had well meaning people drop off cases of frozen microwaveable tv dinners to homeless encampments which lack means to either prepare or store them. The homeless won’t touch them and they become rat food.
Here is a video by the president of the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild regarding this and other things that go wrong in “helping” the homeless in The Seattle Homeless Industrial Complex.
Several things addressed here,
Including pursuit of why even when Seattle asks for more money for “homeless”
the problem keeps getting bigger.
And why one organization has gotten criticism even though
(or probably because) they have been able to achieve incremental improvement.
And how some “homeless” actually have multiple places off the street to live.
It’s 90 minutes.
It’s well worth it if you can take the time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DncNJZ1WDwI&feature=youtu.be
A few years and another life time ago, students collected uneaten food from school lunches, including milk cartons that hadn’t been opened - to deliver to the homeless.
The school district put the kibosh on the operation right after it got started - turns out any food that was sent off to the homeless had to be re-inspected before it was allowed out - and that would have cost a lot of money.
So, tons of un-eaten food and un-drunk milk went right into the dumpster.
If the homeless want a free meal, they are best directed to a shelter where they get fed with a bathroom as part of the facility. Of course, the shelters forbid illegal drug use and bar weapons and other misconduct.
Or the homeless can go to San Francisco or LA where human sewage litters the streets and many parks and vacant lots are homeless encampments where the residents support themselves by dealing drugs and weapons.
In better areas, the locals defend themselves or hire private security and warn off and chase away the homeless -- with pepper spray or Mace for those who are slow to take the message.
I don’t think anyone here is criticizing organizations, such as you mention, in their efforts to help homeless people. Those organizations do excellent work in getting homeless off the streets.
So bag the food, toss it a dumpster, and let them dig it out. Problem solved.
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