[from 4/21/10]
As I write this it's the day the city council votes on the anti-aggressive solicitation ordinance, which its supporters believe will do a world of good by cutting back on the worst panhandling in Seattle. The ordinance is truly a work of art, whatever else you might think of it. I should know, I've been to college. In fact, when I attended our local U of W back in the hippy days, I passed through the Art Building frequently to avoid rain, and learned from seeing the stuff on the walls what art was. The anti-aggressive solicitation ordinance is that good. I'd run off a limited series, individually numbered and signed.
Speaking of hippy days, we had a law against begging back then in the U District. I forget his name, it may have been Killer, but our anti-panhandling law was a cop who had brass knuckles under leather gloves for any dirty hippy caught either begging for quarters or jaywalking. He was eventually caught at it. To make amends, the city later provided extra crosswalks across the Ave, which are still there!
By the way, the real reason you let cops ticket whoever they want is so they beat fewer people.
Whatever happens with the current law, we here at Real Change, particularly we "editors" of the "editorial committee", think it won't actually put a stop to panhandling, and we applied our great minds to solving the real problem. First, one of us observed that most panhandling in Seattle really only occurs during the last ten days of every month. We wondered, why is that? It must mean that the GAU checks they're all getting only lasts 2/3rds of the month. Therefore the solution, this one of us said, would be to increase the check by 1/3.
As a mathematician, I immediately noticed that 1/3rd of 2/3rds is 2/9ths, so 1/9th of the month would still be unaccounted for. Could Seattleites bear an average of 3.38 days of panhandling? Of course not. Something else would have to be done.
Then I realized that just increasing the GAU check wouldn't solve the problem, because we all know that the extra money would just get spent all the faster at the beginning of the month. But I had a brilliant idea: Instead of loading the GAU debit card monthly, load it every 2 hours!
If we give them $1 every 2 hours, that comes to $365.25 per month, on average, which would be an improvement over what they're getting now, and they couldn't spend it all on the 1st. I was thinking what a genius I was for coming up with this plan, when it dawned on me that the sneaky bastards would just panhandle their way through one whole month, saving their dollars, and start splurging on the first of every successive month. They'd do it just out of spite.
But I can fix that! We make it so each dollar that's added to their EBT credit has to be spent before the next one is added. They'll never get together enough for a six-pack again, and they'll have to hang out at dollar stores all day and all night. They'll be too tired to aggressively panhandle! Heck, they'll be too tired to aggressively roll over!
Some people would say that these proposals are mean, but I have one more suggestion that I think will mitigate the meaner aspects. All the ideas I've so far considered assume that the annoying panhandler would rather collect free money than work as panhandler. If so, why not be mean? But what if he/she has a strong work ethic and would prefer to work hard at begging instead of taking free money from the state?
The solution: give him/her a job in advertising!
Seattleites can't stand to be panhandled off of, but they'll go out of their way to find a big screen TV to watch obnoxious Super Bowl half-time ads!
Showing posts with label GA-U. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GA-U. Show all posts
Sunday, January 16, 2011
The Seattle Times Blows
[from 3/10/10]
The Seattle Times editorial board had this to say recently: "The General Assistance-Unemployable program has to go. This program, which provides a temporary safety net for people not working because of physical and mental disabilities, has been on just about every list of proposed cuts year after year."
Sort of like saying, "Charles Manson has asked to be released from prison every year since your mother wore hot pants. So by golly, it's about time we paroled him." Or, "Osama Bin Laden has been wanting to blow up a major US city for years. Let's give him Detroit. Hell, those people aren't working, let's blow it up for him."
That sort of reasoning impresses me. You can make a whole lot of things right, if all they have to be is mad-dog insistent. Why yes, I see it now, smoking crack has to be a good idea, there's someone smoking it in every doorway downtown every night. Why yes, if we're at war, year after year, then we should be.
"Who do these physically and mental disabled people think they are, going around being unemployed like that? OK, they're 'disabled', whatever that means (we're a newspaper, not some Poindexter-walking-dictionary), but that doesn't mean they can't be pimped!"
The Seattle Times editorial department seems to believe that if you withhold funds from GA-U, poverty will cost us all less. After all, if you don't give the poor people money, they'll either get by or die, right? And that'll be free for the rest of us! It's a win-win situation!
The Times is run by such adorable, cute, knuckle-dragging, social Darwinians. Aren't they the cutest social Darwinians you ever did see? Yes they are!
It's not that the Times doesn't understand the benefits of free money. They were happy to get their 40% discount in B&O taxes last year, along with this state's other newspapers. That was OK because at least they are working (only just -- it would help if they fired up a collective neuron once in a while) and the tax break was just a tax break and not income. Sill, it was a gift, justified at the time because newspapers were hurting, and granted in spite of a state budget shortfall. It was an investment, after all. An investment in newspapers, something we care about!
Maybe we have here a continuation of the "corporations are people, too, and they're bigger so they're more so than ordinary people" theory. When corporations hurt, they hurt more than anyone else.
I would be inclined to go along with the Times view if these disabled people on welfare were making off like Madoff, but what we're talking about is a benefit that has been frozen since the early 90s at $339 per month max, although that is now not enough money to pay commercial rent, even assuming that the recipient doesn't spend any of it on anything else.
By the way, the thinking behind giving so little money, apparently (I'm making this up as I write it because obviously legislators arranged it, and so there can't really have been any thinking involved), is that 1) disabled people take up less space than non-disabled people, on average, so they can double and triple up in apartments and 2) they get food stamps don't they? What's that? -- The food stamps only pay for enough to buy food for two weeks of each month? Well then 3) they can go to food banks can't they? What's that? -- Without places to live they can't cook anything and have to carry food bank food everywhere? -- so, fine, they'll lose weight, more of them will be able to pack in a room, savings all around. We've also heard that rice soaked in jars of vinegar for a month becomes chewable.
Summarizing: The Seattle Times, not satisfied with the fact that GA-U is inadequate, wants it gone altogether, and the poor magically gone with it. Well, I'd like the Times gone. So?
The Seattle Times editorial board had this to say recently: "The General Assistance-Unemployable program has to go. This program, which provides a temporary safety net for people not working because of physical and mental disabilities, has been on just about every list of proposed cuts year after year."
Sort of like saying, "Charles Manson has asked to be released from prison every year since your mother wore hot pants. So by golly, it's about time we paroled him." Or, "Osama Bin Laden has been wanting to blow up a major US city for years. Let's give him Detroit. Hell, those people aren't working, let's blow it up for him."
That sort of reasoning impresses me. You can make a whole lot of things right, if all they have to be is mad-dog insistent. Why yes, I see it now, smoking crack has to be a good idea, there's someone smoking it in every doorway downtown every night. Why yes, if we're at war, year after year, then we should be.
"Who do these physically and mental disabled people think they are, going around being unemployed like that? OK, they're 'disabled', whatever that means (we're a newspaper, not some Poindexter-walking-dictionary), but that doesn't mean they can't be pimped!"
The Seattle Times editorial department seems to believe that if you withhold funds from GA-U, poverty will cost us all less. After all, if you don't give the poor people money, they'll either get by or die, right? And that'll be free for the rest of us! It's a win-win situation!
The Times is run by such adorable, cute, knuckle-dragging, social Darwinians. Aren't they the cutest social Darwinians you ever did see? Yes they are!
It's not that the Times doesn't understand the benefits of free money. They were happy to get their 40% discount in B&O taxes last year, along with this state's other newspapers. That was OK because at least they are working (only just -- it would help if they fired up a collective neuron once in a while) and the tax break was just a tax break and not income. Sill, it was a gift, justified at the time because newspapers were hurting, and granted in spite of a state budget shortfall. It was an investment, after all. An investment in newspapers, something we care about!
Maybe we have here a continuation of the "corporations are people, too, and they're bigger so they're more so than ordinary people" theory. When corporations hurt, they hurt more than anyone else.
I would be inclined to go along with the Times view if these disabled people on welfare were making off like Madoff, but what we're talking about is a benefit that has been frozen since the early 90s at $339 per month max, although that is now not enough money to pay commercial rent, even assuming that the recipient doesn't spend any of it on anything else.
By the way, the thinking behind giving so little money, apparently (I'm making this up as I write it because obviously legislators arranged it, and so there can't really have been any thinking involved), is that 1) disabled people take up less space than non-disabled people, on average, so they can double and triple up in apartments and 2) they get food stamps don't they? What's that? -- The food stamps only pay for enough to buy food for two weeks of each month? Well then 3) they can go to food banks can't they? What's that? -- Without places to live they can't cook anything and have to carry food bank food everywhere? -- so, fine, they'll lose weight, more of them will be able to pack in a room, savings all around. We've also heard that rice soaked in jars of vinegar for a month becomes chewable.
Summarizing: The Seattle Times, not satisfied with the fact that GA-U is inadequate, wants it gone altogether, and the poor magically gone with it. Well, I'd like the Times gone. So?
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