This is an interesting idea I've not seen used in any park I've been to, before. I think FNB is beating the permit system by not having genuine organized groups -- they may only use a handful of people that enter the park together. A lot of parks I've seen, lately, get funded with taxpayer dollars and are still open to the public. They're not fully accessible to anyone out side the community, though, as the entire community is gated off. Only those that live behind the gate fund the park. Almost, in essence, an HOA.

Yeah, that's not practical in this case based on the satellite imagery.

At what point do the "authorities" decide to "ask" those receiving the food if they are homeless?
Is the next step a law that all within the Vegas city limits without a permanent address in Nevada wear an arm-band? A tattoo perhaps?
How is this to be done?

I had an opportunity tonight to talk to the Director of the local homeless shelter. I asked her about her successes, since, as it has been pointed out, I don't ever see people who do well. She said that they do indeed have them ... this week alone she has placed six people in apartments. This is an unusually high number. She didn't say what was more typical.

She was quite excited, since hers is a relatively new program, and they've been needing the boost. They usually have 60-70 people staying at their casual shelter (folks are taken by vans to different places in the county each night, usually churches or community centers. They will be opening a 50-bed permanent shelter in the near future, apparently once some life-safety code stuff gets taken care of in their building.

She is hoping that similar programs get started in the Western and Eastern parts of the county, but it is not an easy task, given the NIMBY aspects of homeless programs of any kind. The benefits of opening other shelters is that it would allow each section of the county to focus on service provision for their own homeless residents. The idea is to keep people in their own communities, rather than foist the problem on some other part of the county, or on another county.

Soup kitchens and food cupboards are not the exclusive province of the homeless. Many folks with limited incomes or resources make use of these programs. The homeless are the ones that you think of first, however.

So, if they are just scruffy looking apartment dwellers that is perfectly legal and no officer of the law would raise a ruckus I take it, since no arm-band, chip-implant or tattoo would be present, right?

Soup kitchens and food cupboards are charitable organizations that operate from a fixed location that is either owned or leased by the organization. It is not a couple of tables (or even a stack of boxes) in a public park where the homeless loiter.

If someone makes a van or bus into one and that is what it is to them, then it is one. Who made you the authority on soup kitchens?

All this talk of soup is making me hungry.

At 8:01am, soup is only part of this compelete breakfast...

If I can have breakfast all day at IHOP, I should be able to find soup at 8am. Anything from lobster bisque to Chunky Sirloin Burger will do nicely.

Say, what kind of soup do the homeless get at kitchens, anyways?

YOU ASK WHAT KIND OF SOUP?!

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

:p

As to what kind of soup? What goes in "gruel?"

mmmmmmm..... Homeless people soup....yummy!

Be careful of the bones.

The Soup Nazi is selling autographed photographs of himself for $200. :eek:

Why, I do believe it is lawsuit time!

"It's so chunky you'll want to eat it with a fork...but use a spoon, to get every bite!"

Have a heart attack and die from surprise. ACLU were already trying the case in the press earlier...see upthread.

Let 'em sue....Vegas will declare the homeless and the samaritan are urban terrorists and have the shipped to Gitmo with Homeland Security funding.

The Constitution? Bush wrote a post-signing statement to annul that. ;)

Speaking of stretches.

Just remeber the parable of the Samaritan was told to answer the question "Who then is my neighbor?" Obviously your "samaritan" isn't a neighbor to the people whose park she's exploiting.

:rotflol:

She's taking advantage of it and not paying for it. Would you prefer another word? Too bad.

She isn't really an altruist, but she plays one in political theater.

How is it her advantage? I thought it would be to the advantage of the homeless.

Out of curiosity, what is she not paying for? What, exactly, is she taking advantage of?

Maggie, have you ever considered that she fed the homeless people out of the goodness of her heart? That she might just like helping people?

Briefly. Until I did some online research on Food Not Bombs. Then it was clear to me what her motivation was.

Maybe you should do that too.

If she "likes helping people", she sure doesn't seem to like the folks whose park she's using, who she'd definately not helping. And not everybody agrees that she's helping the people she's feeding, either.

The park.

Oh. I didn't know you were required to pay for things like that.

Well, somebody "pays for things like that". In the case, it's those nasty people who don't want a soup kitchen in it.

In addition to those nasty people ladling out the soup. And the nasty people eating the soup. And the nasty people who support such an endeavor. Nasty nasty nasty.

Oh...sorry...the official description of the townspeople is "mean-spirited Republicans". My mistake.

They are playing Us & Them.... a very nasty game.

Well there's your loophole.

I'm sure the town council considers Republicans 'reasonable ordinary persons', and many of them don't think anyone is entitled to county public assistance.;)

At the very least illegal aliens should be able to eat for free.

Ah, but it doesn't say "think". It says "beleive". And Republicans *know* what an entitlement is...to many liberals it's like water to a fish:
Not to worry...ACLU will tell us it's illegal to discriminate against the homeless. It's only legal to discriminate in their favor.

Sure. Entitlements like subsidies for big oil companies. What's free food from a non-governmental organization compared to the Cheney administration's reducing environmental restrictions and subsidizing the largest corporate quarterly profits in the history of the world? :right:

There was a time when people were "entitled" to keep money they made. That appeared to end around the time Congressional Democrats started trying to call tax cuts "unfunded expenditures", in some odd perversion of Jimmy Carter's "zero-based bugeting" concept.

The new "zero base" was: however much the government took from you last time around...anything less than that became a "subsidy".

Actually, I think it ended when the robber barons, and their ilk, tried to keep their employees' salaries, and didn't care if those same employees died making the wealthy wealthier. If those in control of wealth were less gluttonous, there would be no need for labor unions, entitlements, and the like. It all stems from excessive greed.

Back in a week - TTFN.

Oh, puhleese...

The government has never taken as much in taxes as the robber barons did in "company stores", where you often came out owing more each month.

But the Robber Barons, while treating employees like dirt and politicians like Hummel Figurines to be collected, did however, care about the country.

Their current successors, the Fortune 500 CEOs, seem to care about nothing but personal gain. Not the employees, not the country and not the future of the company they head, or it's stockholders, past their personal wealth accruing tenure.
ME, with a capital $. :mad:

Why do you really care what happens to those people that are so unequiped to function that they cannot keep a minimum wage job? They will simply reproduce less then others and everything will balance itself. Hey, it works for every other animal, why not us?:neutral:

Those too stupid or ill equipped to keep minimum wage jobs tend to reproduce more than smart, gainfully employed people.

We are being outbred.

So it's ok that if you are unequipped to stop somebody from cutting your dick off, it's ok that you, then, will not be able to reproduce? Hey, it works for every other animal, why not you?:cool:

I care because, except for circumstances, that could be me. Or you. Or Maggie. There's very little sperating the homeless from the homed.

Spexxvet, you make a lot of sense. "There but for the grace of God go I".

I wonder how many of the people making these anti-poor laws, and those supporting them, consider themselves to be Christian?

Not Maggie.

One of the biggest financial obstacles I faced during four years of involuntary unemployment was the huge slice of my remaining retirement savings taken out by taxes that mostly went for entitlements as I tapped that money to feed my family and put my kids though college. It's kind of hard to feel much sympatico for those drowning in the same pool you're in when they keep climbing up on your shoulders.

I dispute the tacit supposition above that it is just some roulette wheel in the sky that determines these outcomes. That's bullshit. And it's an incredibly destructive meme to sell to those still in the pool.

Absolutely. Let those still in the pool drown....for their own good

No, they need to swim...you can't swim for them. And I'll be damned if I'll let them drown me just because they can't.

Funny how the people who sell the abovementioned meme most vigorously are those who are are getting a slice of the proceeds themselves.

In what way am I getting a slice of the proceeds myself? Right now, I am a tax` paying member of the established order....of course I represent a lot of people who are currentl drowning. See.....sometimes it's good to shout at the drowning man to "Swim dammit!" but other times it really is better to drag him out and rescuscitate him.

For free?

No, make them pay - take their house. Oh, wait - they're broke and homeless...

Actually I am paid a very modest allowance (£9,400 per annum before tax) by the Council in order to cover costs incurred during my duties as an elected member. The people I represent? No I don't charge them. Those who are in work pay Council tax a portion of which goes to paying Councillors the aforementioned allowance. Those not in work are exempt from Council tax and therefore do not contribute financially in any way for the representation they recieve. At no point are any of my constituents charged for this representation.

representing them can mean anything from putting their views to the Council body, to researching and representing them directly to organisations such as the Housing Associations, Anti Social Behaviour Units, Police etc.

On several occassions I have attended interviews at Housing Advice in order to provide moral support and add weight to their claim for assistance.

Erm...what? Dana is a (presumably paid) government official who was elected on the basis of a particular ideological platform.

How about you AND them not drowning? Maybe the guy on the high dive can tread water with both of you (when you were forcably unemployed).

Yeah. Them and people who aren't focused on their own pocketbook to the exclusion of what might be good for other people/our country/the world.:smashfrea

The "drowning people" can't pay her.

Surely *some* of the people you represent pay taxes.

No, but everybody else does.

Tell me about this. Why couldn't you get a job?

Yah, pretty poorly paid :P After tax my allowance works out at around £670 per month. For this I work anywhere between 25 and 50 hours a week.