May 16, 2007
Go Home Already: Delicate Flowers
>> If you're in the market for a Crown Victoria, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has a few to sell. [WTOP]
>>It looks like Paul Wolfowitz might finally soon be gone from the World Bank. But President Bush isn't about to let his departure spoil an otherwise solid 12-year run during which the bank's president has had the word "wolf" somewhere in their name. Obvious replacements are Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Wolfgang Puck or the guys from Steppenwolf. [New York Times]
>> Mike DeBonis mocks a new Vaginal Rejuvenation clinic set to open in D.C., and rightly so. But we're a little surprised the City Paper would alienate such an obvious potential advertiser so soon. [City Desk]
>> A handful of congressional members are spending the month trying to eat entirely off $21 worth of federal food stamps a week to gain a better understanding of how difficult it is. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and his wife are blogging about the experience. [Boing Boing]
Martin Austermuhle contributed to this post. Photo by famous!
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The editorial/business firewall is a beautiful thing.
Fred Thompson is just going to nominate Dick Wolf in a year, anyway. Ice-T is going to be sent to Columbia to "rap" with the drug dealers, and all future discussions about Africa are going to be punctuated with "Dunh-DUNH!" and celebrity guest apearances.
-sam
Its really not that difficult for one person to eat rather well on $21/week. Eat breakfast at home, bring a sandwich for lunch, and make some kind of soup or casserole or chili for dinner that will last a few days. Not glamerous, but if you're on food stamps, it shouldn't be.
I get actually get annoyed if I spend more than $15-20 in one trip to the grocery store, and I only go once a week.
A Congressional Food Stamp Challenge. What fun!
Here is what they forgot to do: factor in the countless hours the working poor must take off from work to spend waiting in offices for initial food stamp program approval and periodic re-approval; spend eight hours a day at the hard physical labor typical of America's working poor, which requires a higher caloric intake than that of office workers; sleep in a room that is too hot in summer, too cold in winter, which further depletes the body's energy; walk because they cannot afford bus fare; let illness sap their remaining strength because they cannot afford medical care. Bon appetit.
Mike:
The solution is obvious.... just give up, quit working, and get yourself put in public housing. That's worked for several generations now.
Our priorities are skewed. We do little to nothing to help the very poor work their way out of poverty. But we're right there to make sure that those not willing to work can live at government expense in public housing for generations.
laser hoo-hoo tightening? i love it!
Hillman:
I gather you have never been the guest of anyone who lives in public housing. Tenants are the elderly, or working single mothers, or older women raising grandchildren because daughters have run away, died of AIDS or are incarcerated. There are no adult men, no married couples. Resident apartments are generally immaculate, but because of the District's lack of maintenance and security, few would live there if they had alternatives, and move if they can.
The subsidized or aptly-named "Section 8" housing is simply a privatization of concentrations of the poor and working poor, but in flimsy three-floor apartment buildings in marginal areas, or which the District pays Georgetown-scale rents. Maintenance and security are even worse than in public housing communities.
You do not have to take my word for this description. Volunteer as a Child Advocate or tutor so you can go on home visits and see for yourself.
I never said everyone in public housing is a non-working freeloader.
I've been in more than my share of public housing. In fact, I've worked in one.
I'll never forget life guarding for a public housing complex (albeit not in DC).
Here I was, showing up at 8 am to lifeguard at their pool. And about 11 am is when the residents would struggle out of their apartments to lay at the pool most of the day. Hearing their excuses for why they didn't get jobs was most enlightening for this little liberal.
Then, cleaning out the human excrement in the pool became a nearly daily experience, which had the added irony of being exactly the kind of thing the residents whose shit I was cleaning up wouldn't dream of doing as employment. This, in the free pool they were getting from my tax dollars (admittedly, not many tax dollars, as I was fairly poor myself). My shitty little college apartment complex didn't have a pool, free or otherwise.
Sure, not all of them behaved like this. But a sizeable number did.
As for their being no adult men, that's just not the case. Sure, legally there aren't. But everyone knows that adult men live in many of these complexes. That's where the whole vernacular 'staying at', as opposed to living at, comes from.
I agree that security in these places is abysmal. And that's a shame for the many law-abiding tenants.
But a great many of them are not law abiding. As I found out the hard way, when three of them stuck a gun to my genitals as I walked home from work here on the Hill a decade ago. The irony of it all - they were living rent free off of my tax dollars while they were holding me up.
Public housing in America continues to be a disgrace. It poorly serves the elderly and disabled, and is still a haven for those that have multiple kids and smoke crack all day in lieu of getting jobs.
Again, I'm not saying all public housing residents are that way. Far from it.
But a lot are. And we've done nothing about it for decades.
Instead, we've allowed these places to not only not serve the truly deserving but also become breeding grounds for yet another generation of thugs and addicts.
It's one week on food stamps, not one month.