Posted on 09/19/2002 5:27:27 AM PDT by Valin
Bob Coté is a one-man alternative to the welfare state. Take one part Florence Nightingale, add three parts John Wayne, and one part cowboy poet, and you’ve got a 6-foot-3 former Golden Gloves boxer who crashed into an alcoholic gutter in 1983, had an epiphany about his wasted life on Denver’s Skid Row, poured out his vodka bottle, and spent the two decades since running a shelter that turns homeless drunks and junkies into productive citizens—with no help from the federal nanny state he loudly accuses of killing addicts “on the installment plan.”
His shelter or, better put, rehabilitation center has a chapel, a medical clinic, a weight room, cooking facilities, a GED classroom, a computer lab, and three businesses that provide jobs for the men and a large chunk of his budget. Its name is Step 13. “Everybody thinks it’s named after the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it’s actually because of Jesus and the 12 apostles and the original 13 colonies—God and country.” After all, Coté adds, “only in America” could a recovering alcoholic “have this vision in his mind, and do it.”
The alternative to God and country, as Coté sees it, is the welfare state, an enemy on whom he’s landed some telling blows. His tireless attacks on Social Security disability payments to addicts were instrumental in moving Congress to change the law in 1996, so that merely being a drunk or junkie no longer qualifies you for hundreds of monthly tax dollars until your untimely demise. At the showdown on Capitol Hill, Sheriff Coté didn’t flinch when the black hats tried to run him out of town.
“Congressman Joe Kennedy said, ‘Mr. Coté, don’t tell me about drugs and alcohol. I know all about the harms. I lost a brother to a heroin overdose.’”
Coté answered, “Look, Congressman, I’ll agree the Kennedys know a lot about drugs and alcohol, but I’m here to tell ya that this government plan is killing people, and you need to put a stop to it.”
“His face got real red, and he just went behind the curtain and took off. Then Maxine Waters picked up his anthem, said she was raised in the projects and was on welfare, then she started talking about the ‘triage of the modality.’ I said, ‘I don’t know what “triage of the modality” is. All I know is, the taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing addicts!’”
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanenterprise.org ...
Sweet!
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