Posted on 03/06/2009 7:53:08 AM PST by icwhatudo
Pop singer Crystal Waters did a song many years ago called “She’s Homeless.” The hook went like this: “She’s just like you and me, but she is homeless, she is homeless.”
In D.C., the homeless are just like you and me, and they have cell phones, they have cell phones.
(Excerpt) Read more at michellemalkin.com ...
its even worse, another article described the menu as totally organic, what michele is serving is rissotto. lol man lol.
hmm, where do they send the bill?
You get the phone free and then buy minutes.
Pre-paid minutes possibly?
“Homeless... with a cell phone”
My baby moma payin’ fo’ it.
Aunt Ester!
Course they be homeless, they only “STAYS” anywhere for a lil’ while, til da ho gets mad and da free food runs out, never live anywhere.
Good point. Also, not all the people at a homeless shelter are homeless - some of them are there to work or serve in other capacities. I’m in a bluegrass band that plays at a homeless shelter in Madistan. None of us are homeless.
Yep, and I’ll bet there’s big screen, plasma tv in the crib with Wii and Xbox 360 too.
I taught at an inner city school in Dallas for 5 years in the 90s, where the majority of the children attending were labeled “below poverty level”. It never ceased to amaze me that the “poor” kids ‘couldn’t afford’ things like pencils, notebook paper, a dollar for field trips—YET they would come to school in Michael Jordan sneakers, wearing NFL jackets with the Oakland Raiders symbol on them (lots of gang kids at this school), brand new blue jeans that even I couldn’t afford on my teacher’s salary (started at $22,000 a year in 1992, woot!), and ALWAYS had $5 up to $20 bills to buy themselves dessert after getting their free lunches!!! Boggled my mind!!
Ya, how many of these people on public assistance have air conditioning, cable TV, x boxes, plasma TVs, cell phones, nice cars, and who the heck is paying for it all?
This country has the richest poor in the world.
Just what is the difference between a homeless person and a bum? (besides some feel good name change like progressive for communist)
True that! I substitute taught in Detroit a long time ago and the "poverty kids" had some great clothes. They always had money for chips, pop, cigarettes, drugs, cable TV, video games, cars ... yet they were poor.
Take a wild guess.
Well GEE! I wonder why.
Read thorstein veblen and your mind will be less boggled.
Poverty means:
A)Very short time horizons.
B)Money spent on outward appearances of “wealth.”
Among other things, these are some of the pathologies of poverty. Those expensive sneakers or jackets may be the best things a poor kid owns. They are not viewed as “extras” that go along with a nice place to live or a long term financial plan, though that is what they may signal.
That by the definition of homeless precludes "homeless" people.
Or am I missing something here?
A nice pair of Jordans is a lot cheaper than a closet to put them in.
And chicks don't often see your closet first...
Not just a cell phone but a cell phone with a camera.
Hell even mine doesn’t have that crap on it and I paid for mine.
It certainly help to own a phone if you want to get called for a job.
A few years ago there was a homeless man living under a freeway bridge in Richmond, with his laptop and cell phone, that had lost his house in San Rafael when he had lost his job as a sales exec. He had found another job, but couldn’t afford rent.
Government schizophrenia?
First time I ever heard of ACORN was in spring of ‘98—I was working in Little Rock—Huckabee was Gov.—back when he was 900 lbs. or whatever.
Anyway, ACORN, picketed a hotel that Huck was in one afternoon for a luncheon—I think they even crashed the event, went inside and broke up the luncheon. The paper next day was talking about the “poor “ and “downtrodden “ ACORN folks—but they had a pic of one of the protesters—a big fat woman with a slew of gold jewelry on her ears and around her neck, and the hand holding the sign had some gaudy French-manicured nails—all this was on a weekday afternoon-when most people are at work.
The paper didn’t mention all that, but lots of people wrote in to point it out—
In a few months, that could be me.
The same pathologies have always been at work when it comes to poverty. Look at the snazzy suits the Irish and Jewish immigrants bought when they first hit America and were able to afford snazzy suits.
What is fascinating, of course, is that the styles popular among the poor eventually become associated with poverty, lack of taste, etc. So as to cancel out whatever outward signs of wealth they were intended to create.
So, we must assume that this man is looking for a job at some point.
Dignity cannot be bought, but we all try to maintain our own no matter the cost.
Exactly. This is not an emergency phone.
If the guy really is a vagrant (sorry - don’t like the word homeless), then it was provided for him by his employer so that he knows when and where to pick up and deliver the drugs.
LOL—In Philly a year or two ago, the news showed a story in August, just before school began, about some private charity that provided basic school supplies (pencils, paper, notebooks, bookbags, etc) to “needy” kids.
They interviewed one of the dads (!) who took their kids there. He was saying how grateful he was to the charity.
This guy had an expensive FUBU shirt on,fancy watch, and earrings in both ears. I’m guessing he could have afforded a box of pencils.....
Dignity is easy.
You want to “cure” poverty and all its associated dysfunctions? Instill in people the belief that tomorrow will be better than today and the next day even better, etc. etc. etc.
Let me know if you make progress on that — I’ll call the Nobel people to tip them off...
The difference is they weren’t doing it on someone else’s dime...
“Ya, how many of these people on public assistance have air conditioning, cable TV, x boxes, plasma TVs, cell phones, nice cars, and who the heck is paying for it all?”
I see it all the time. These so-called poor blacks driving around in shiney new caddy’s, bimmers, and lexus’. Hell I saw one today that was driving a new Mustang convertable that still had the sticky stuff in the window from the dealer sticker.
Everytime I see this sort of crap I think to myself as I’m driving my 14 year old car that I’m in the wrong line of work. Sad thing is that I’m too honest to mooch off the government the way these career “poor” do.
They were doing it largely through criminal activity in which they preyed on their own.
me too.
Government schizophrenia?
I thought "we the people" had that one.
If the Goobermint has it, that means they really don't know what they are doing, as opposed to actually planning our destruction.
That means we may have a chance after all. ;)
I live in a rural town outside of Austin. One of the local churches used to give away ‘baskets’ of food items for Thanksgiving and Christmas. As a member of the Kiwanis Club at the time, I would often go down and help. When the ‘needy’ folks came in to pick up their food, the main church lady (mean ol’ bat but with a touch of common sense)would ask them if they had cable, or a cell phone, and to the ones who said yes she would say “If you can afford cable television, you can afford food” and send them on their way empty handed.
I actually could care less about the clothes aspect—it was the big bills they were using to buy desserts, when they were on free lunches (cost $.40 for those who could ‘afford’ it!)—
as a teacher my hands were tied in many ways as far as disciplining students went (waste of time to send them to the office like in the ‘good old days’), but one way that worked very well for me was prohibiting students from purchasing those desserts after lunch!! They would get furious, but it worked—until an administrator visiting my classroom for 5 minutes one day caught wind of what I was doing and wrote me up for being ‘racist’ and ‘discriminating’ against these poor widdle 4th graders!! I protested vigorously to get that crap out of my permanent record and threatened to go to the tv reporters otherwise, and ‘supposedly’ they pulled it from my files. I got jobs in other school districts after that so I guess they did!
me 3
I know a guy who would be classified as homeless. He’s basically self sufficient and off the grid. Lives in a hand built shack in the woods in a suburb. Doesn’t have drug abuse issues, just likes to live the way he lives. Rides his bike everywhere, dumpster dives for meals. Is clean and well kept. He does have a cell phone and uses it to find work when he can.
I was also just in Tijuana last week for work. It reinforced my long held belief that there is not one “poor” person in America. Not ONE.
...”we must assume that this man is looking for a job at some point.”
Me thinks you assume too much.
I don’t know if it was “largely”
But if it was true, no one bailed them out with $ for neccesities if they blew their money on trifles. And if they preyed on their own-it didn’t cost others money-or endamger them. If those folks committed a crime and the authorities got involved, they were summarily executed or spent many years at hard labor.
It’s nothing like what we have now.
Same attitude that keeps the drug trade going — immediate gratification. A poverty pathology and no way to stop it.
However, even more importantly: teachers have permanent records? I still live in fear my seventh grade permanent record will one day surface and fall into the wrong hands...
I had lunch once with a professor from UNLV who gave my department a talk on poverty. He said they think of things differently and gave me an example — family doesn’t have a refrigerator, so their church takes up a collection and gets them a refrigerator. The family sells the refrigerator and goes to Disneyland. We find this mind boggling, but the family figures they’ve been OK without a refrigerator, but they’ve never been to Disneyland.
Good for her! :-)
It’s a matter of priorities and teaching kids about responsibility and consequences to me! I also had students who had parents working 2 or more backbreaking labor intensive jobs who sent their kids to school in clean, hand me down, patched up, goodwill clothes who REFUSED to accept the free lunches or any other ‘free’ stuff (except medical sometimes if their kids were sick)—to me, THAT is a person with true dignity. All the rest was simply show and blatant taking advantage of others’ kindness and tax dollars.
Son, that's DARWINISM!
[apologies to 'Tea House of the August Moon'...]
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