For those of you who don’t know, Pennsylvania Avenue is ripe pickin’s for the homeless of DC. Many of the most popular museums and sights line the eight lane street between the Capitol Building and the White House, and so ya’all rubes, rife with guilt over your wealth that allowed you to stay at our over-priced hotels and eat our over-priced resturaunt food (and pay our 10% tourist tax) are easy marks for our hundreds of homeless people panhandling along that one mile stretch.<\/p>\n
I’ve lived here nearly ten years now and the folks who are there now are generally the very same people that were there ten years ago. Well, that’s a problem for the Hope and Change Administration, it seems. They’re an unsightly bunch (the homeless) and they might muss up the scenery for Tuesday’s inaguration, according to the Washington Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n In years past, U.S. cities grappling with sizable homeless populations rounded them up in mass arrests, bought them one-way bus tickets to nearby states or gave them movie passes to keep them out of sight during such events as the Olympics or political conventions, said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. It wasn’t until the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, where officials opened shelters and welcomed homeless people with warm food, that a more humane precedent was set, Stoops said.<\/p>\n The District plans to follow that city’s lead and open all of its shelters for 24 hours during the inauguration, offering warm beverages, food and live television feeds of the day’s ceremonies, said Mafara Hobson, spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D).<\/p>\n “We’ll be open all day. We’ll make it a day of celebration, a fun place to stay away from the crowds,” said David Treadwell, executive director of the Central Union Mission shelter in Logan Circle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Whoo-hoo. C’mon, pal lets go to the fun shelter! How about dealing with the problem of hobos on the street for the rest of us who have to navigate through the throngs of pan handlers every day? Not to mention the recent spate of hobo murders<\/a> in DC.<\/p>\n I can’t figure why someone with no home would remain in DC in the winter anyway. I’d be in Miami Beach by October. Sleep on the beach, use the public showers – scarf up food from the plates of diners right on the sidewalk. Sweet.<\/p>\n But this is typical liberalism – hide the problem so everyone feels better about themselves without actually accomplishing anything, other than making all concerned feel better for a day. So what do they do on January 21st? There’s no Bush to blame anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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