Help us find Annie
Another day of irony
ORLANDO, FL. City officials have banned charitable groups from feeding homeless people in parks downtown, arguing that transients who gather for weekly meals create safety and sanitary problems for businesses. The measure, approved Monday, prevents serving large groups in parks and other public property within two miles of City Hall without a permit. The American Civil Liberties Union vowed to sue, saying it's a superficial fix that ignores the city's homeless problem. City commissioner Patty Sheehan pushed for the ordinance after complaints from business owners and residents that homeless people were causing problems at a downtown park popular with joggers and dog walkers. A group called Food Not Bombs, which has served weekly vegetarian meals to homeless people for more than a year there, said it would continue illegally. Robin Stotter, who is opening a restaurant downtown, said he would support homeless people by pledging money for food and shelter, but supported the ordinance. "The homeless issue is not going to be solved today," he said. "It's a safety issue, and the public deserves a safe place to be." Two of the city's five commissioners voted against the ordinance _ including Robert Stuart, the head of a homeless shelter. Stuart said the city was moving to "criminalize goodhearted people." "We're putting a Band-Aid on a critical problem," said commissioner Sam Ings, the other opposing vote.
At least the city of Las Vegas had the political wisdom to say that the government could do a better job than private efforts of handling homeless people.
The French are not handling matters much better, as this report notes:
Tent camps have become a familiar sight in Paris since the aid group Doctors of the World, or Medecins du Monde, first distributed tents in December to shelter the homeless and make their plight less invisible.
But complaints about the tents have been pouring into City Hall, and four tents were burned this weekend in circumstances that are still unclear. With Paris sweltering in a heat wave, authorities say the tents are unsanitary and dangerous.
Socialist City Hall wants many of them moved, and the conservative government wants them just plain gone. Last week, the government named a mediator to find a solution. ***
The government fears the tents give people a reason to stay on the streets, expose them to sanitation problems and encourage them to live in groups _ a problem because it is harder to persuade them to get help. And God help the government if those pesky rascals get together their own political party. ***
"The government's objective in this affair is simple: no more tents," said Benoist Apparu, communications official for the Ministry of Social Cohesion. Now, there's a piquantly Orwellian government agency. Yet two short paragraphs later,
City officials say they don't disapprove of the tent initiative but want mediators to persuade homeless to move their tents away from apartment buildings, for example.
...revealing traditional French cowardice, even when dealing with as harmless a group as a flock of out-of-work bums.
As if that's not "mean-spirited" enough,
Police in France said they had thwarted an attempt by a group of marijuana smokers to roll the world's longest joint by seizing a work-in-progress measuring 80 centimetres (32 inches) in length.
"At some point, these young people had wanted to craft a joint of 1.12 metres to beat the world record in the discipline and get it officially registered," said a police officer in eastern France.
"We don't know who had the idea. Sometimes ideas are created in an astonishing way," he said. Yup. When you're stoned or drunk enough, you think up the damndest things...
Meanwhile, things are just ducky for the majority of Americans, as Reuters reports:
More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too big to fit into scanners, or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate, radiologists reported on Tuesday. ... One problem is with gastric bypass surgery, where the patients are by definition obese.
musicnotes
Maybe cities need to give land to the homeless people to use for tent
cities. Outhouses with deep holes would help with the sanitation issue
(many homeless do clog toilets and mess up port-a-pots). Being exposed to
the elements is going to make the homeless sicker and without income who
pays for the health care.