Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Raving and Ranting

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BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?

If you live in New York, you are familiar with the bums who sit in front of a folding table with a large 5 gallon plastic water bottle , asking passersby to contribute to the United Homeless Organization. This is a common sight all over Manhattan. After all this is where the money is.

I never donated a penny because the bums asking for money looked healthy enough to work. Furthermore, there was always a Dickensian feel to the whole enterprise of using bums to collect money.

Well, those of us who are suspicious by nature and believers in self-reliance for survival have been justified in our skepticism when attorney general Andrew Cuomo filed a suit claiming that that the the whole UHO was a scam run by con artists who pocketed the money collected. UHO founder Stephen Riley and director Myra Walker took a big cut of the money to fund personal shopping sprees at Gamestop, Home Shopping Network, Bed, Bath & Beyond, P. C. Richard, as well as their monthly cable bills, legal papers charge.

This is ACORN revisited. A group of con artists taking the public for a ride, but the outcry seems to come in the form of some minor reports by local news outlets and Glenn Beck in his radio show.

I must add a personal experience that took place last year in Boca Raton. I had just eaten breakfast at Panera Bread where I noticed a big "Now Hiring" sign outside the store. As I drove away, I stopped at a red light in the intersection of Glades and 441, where a young, healthy and relatively good looking female was holding a sign asking for money. As she approached my car, I opened the window and told her about the sign in Panera. She looked at me for a few seconds, said "fuck you" and walked to the next car where she probable got some money from a resident of the Polo Club. Yes, the ones who earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.

America...what a country!
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In the meantime, Climategate continues to unravel. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on the subject that merits reading.

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