The Glade 4.0

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/19/ ... -homeless/

Really what a wonderful thoughtful Nanny he is! He would rather you have no food then a bad diet.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

So donate healthy foods instead of unhealthy ones, problem solved.

No.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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All donations, the city states it can not check the nutritional content. But I am sure they will establish a area where you can donate the money you were going to use to donate food, so they can purchase a healthy diet for the homeless.

Granted this is the same area that tried to outlaw all salt in cooking.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/nan ... n-salt-nyc

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

They can take my salt when they pry it from my cold, cardiac-arrested hands.


Or not...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ar-on-salt
http://www.rense.com/general65/salt.htm
http://www.good.is/post/is-salt-actuall ... confusion/
http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/12/s ... it-really/

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Based on my read, it seemed like it was home-cooked food donations they couldn't take. I would assume the packaged foods would be fine, as their is nutritional info on the labels.

Honestly, I was surprised that any food assistance program would accept home-cooked donations. No telling what someone put into them.

Yeah, this. Canned and pre-packaged foods, etc. would be, I assume, fine. Not saying the fat/salt/etc. content thing isn't stupid and myopic, but it doesn't sound like the sky-is-falling rhetoric of the article is exactly accurate.

Our sense of entitlement has driven us to forget that beggars can't be choosers.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

To play Devil's Advocate, a very significant number of homeless people are overweight.

Come arrest me.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

There is a difference between a beggar (individual) and a state run foodshelf program.

I'd imagine the fact that there is a difference between the two is what caused Coro to make his comment.

If you are so poor you need the help of a state run foodshelf program, you should be desperate enough for food that the content of the food is the least of your concerns.

For the poor person, I agree. However, the State, which is running the program also has some responsibility for what it is providing.

In the sense that it should provide actual meals and not just Hot Pockets, Ramen Noodles, or snack foods, yes. However, there is no reasont he state needs to concern itself with getting exact amounts of certain nutrients into the food. A person should be on food relief for the short term, so it really shouldn't matter what their exact balance of nutrients are. Even in the long term, just making sure they get reasonable portions of fruits, vegetables, meats, grain, etc. should suffice. There's no reason to worry about exact ingredient composition, and people aren't supposed to be on food relief for a long time anyhow. If they're on long enough for it to matter, then it's become food dependence, rather than food relief.

The only exception to this is that obviously the state should be aware of allergens in the food they provide and advise the needy accordingly.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So why don't people just distribute directly to the homeless? That way its not going through the state and wouldn't be subjected to this action.

Once I'm near a PC again ill check and see if that's prohibited as well.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I don't know of any law that says you can't go out and give food to whoever you want. "Why don't people do that?" mainly has to do with everyone not being obsessed with keeping the government out of absolutely everything. Going out and handing out food directly has its own complications and dangers and for some people it's just easier to let the government or a private charitable institution or church handle things.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Agree. Also, there's the practical reality of:

"Ok, great. We have all this food. Now... where are the hungry people?"

Clearly this is a classic example of Aesop's lesson:

"Give a man a hamburger and then you have to pay for his coronary bypass and blood-pressure medicine, so really both he and you would be better off by not giving him anything."

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You could always team up with 600 or so of your best friends and each give him a hamburger once every 600 days and split the costs 600 ways though.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The problem with any government-operated charity, and the reason why the government should not be involved as a general rule, is that it is not charity. It is a tax-payer obligation.

Take this thread, for example. DE mentioned not having the homeless eating hot pockets and ramen noodles. He thought that sounded reasonable, and I'm sure he is not alone in that. So far, it seems that nobody has stopped to consider that a great deal of single people, typically college students and working young adults between the ages of 18 and 25, eat a diet that consists largely of hot pockets and ramen noodles. They eat it because that's what they can afford. Why should a homeless person expect a higher quality diet than someone who's busting their *** trying to make something of themselves?

Private charity is one thing. A church getting together to have a fish fry for all of the homeless in the area is something the faithful are doing with their own money and time. Meanwhile, when it's government-operated, that means the young adults working to get themselves on their feet are obligated to provide for the homeless better than what they provide for themselves. That's **** up.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Except that it's really not "**** up". For one thing, the students busting their asses generally aren't the ones paying the taxes that provide for the homeless to eat, and it's far from all, or even most, that are subsisting that way. Plenty of college kids can go to the chow hall, as can young military people who are definitely busting their *** harder than the homeless. As for those that are just working, a lot are just working to get by, and are not really trying to "make something of themselves." For every kid eating ramen because they can only afford ramen while they're in school or until they get a promotion, there's one eating it because they don't know how to cook, one because they don't like the chow hall, and one eating it because they are in a dead-end job and will be their whole life because they mentally never got beyond high school.

For a second thing, young adults in college and grad school are generally pretty healthy, whereas the homeless include children, who are developing and the elderly and generally plenty of people that have less-than-ideal health in far greater proportions than the 18-to-25 crowd will. They'll be less tolerant of a ramen-and-hot-pockets diet, which will lead to exacerbated health problems, which will lead to greater costs because no matter how much some might wish for it they simply aren't going to be left to die.

Third, those who are getting ahead could probably qualify for food aid themselves if all they can afford is ramen and hot pockets.

Fourth, I haven't looked into the details, but I suspect a lot of the cost of those foods is in their packaging and ease of preparation and with careful buying a balanced meal could be had instead. I suspect that the actual cost of feeding generally balanced meals to the homeless is probably cheaper than feeding them these sorts of "quickie" foods.

Fifth, resentment of tax dollars going to the truly needy isn't a good basis for public policy. Yes, many people can and do stay on food aid most of their lives. However those aren't the sorts of people eating at homeless shelters. Those are people who are homeless and a lot of them simply can't ever do any better for a variety of reasons. So what if a little tax money has to go and feed them healthy meals? Don't be such a cheapass. It's also "**** up"that some people don't want the homeless to be able to get green beans instead of hot pockets just because some working or college kids insist on eating hot pockets.

Now, should the homeless be getting ribeye and baked potato? Absolutely not.

Should private charity handle the burden to the greatest degree possible? Definitely.

However, right now private charity is inadequate. I think that this could be fixed and private charity could handle most or all of the burden of caring for the needy in this country. That, however, is not going to happen without a plan that most of the people in this country are on board with. "End government involvement, stop wealth redistribution, cut taxes, and wait for private charity to pick up the slack from increased donations" is not a plan. That's ideology masquerading as a plan. It's a sound basis to plan from, but if that's your plan you're going to have about as much success as if you plan to assault a hill with the plan of "move forward."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Ron Paul?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Perhaps if so many people are unemployed and going hungry, that is a sign that there are simply too many people?

We are animals who have become too full of ourselves to feed ourselves. We have had for so long that we no longer feel we should be required to get. We feel that we should have simply because we are.

Individual human compassion is a good thing, and has been critical in making ours the dominant species. Institutionalized human compassion cripples economies and causes nations to crumble, because no society can afford to continue providing for an increasing population that feels no impetus to provide for themselves.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Most people throughout history were poor and hungry, so if you took them away we would'nt be where we are today. It takes hundreds of millions at least to sustain our complex, global industries. Poverty rates globally have decreased farther over the last year than ever before, and the human capital could be worthwhile to keep.

Perhaps if so many people are unemployd and hungry it's a sign that invisible elephants are eating all the extra food.



This is just ideological babbling. You don't want to have to pay any taxes for any sort of social program whatsoever, no matter how needy the recipient, and so you come up with a bunch of nonsense about how there are "too many people". There have always been "too many people" by that standard; there has always been someone poor and unable to provide for themselves.



"Institutionalized human compassion" causes this when it gets out of control; when it goes from "A mentally disturbed person should not be left to freeze and starve on the street" to "Fat black women are a human interest story when they have to give up ice cream because of the economy." It does not automatically cause it no matter how minor it might be.

Institutionalized human compassion must exist at some level until and unless private charity can fill the gap. Again, provide a plan. Don't just sit there and talk in airy, vague terms about "we're animals who have become so full of ourselves blah blah blah" and "too many people" and "causes nations to crumble blah blah blah" and so forth. Whoop de do. That's just a lot of pompous blathering looking to get someone to say "Amen, preach it brother Coro" on the internet.

Here's the secret. Society is not going to have a revolution and get rid of the excess people you deem to be beggars. Society is also not going to euthanize anyone that can't pay their bills, either directly, or indirectly by letting them freeze and starve. The people of this country are not going to accept starvation and death for the homeless and the exceedingly poor; even people who are tired of Food Stamp Queens and other forms of easily-abused welfare.

The people are also going to demand that the government do something about the homeless and very poor that resort to crime, and make a public nuisance of themselves, and it's a lot cheaper to feed these people and give them shelter every so often than to arrest and jail them. That's been tried and it didn't work very well.

So, unless you have a way to get private charity to fill the gap, one better than just "lower taxes, smaller government!!111!!onehundredeleven", we're going to be feeding the homeless from the government coffers. I suggest you confine your ire to more reasonable examples of excess in government charity (of which there are plenty) lest you look like an ideologically-driven ******* who thinks its cool to talk about getting rid of excess people on the internet.

Getting rid of excess people is never pretty, and you better be **** careful. Someone might decide you're the excess since you resent giving a homeless guy an apple rather than a hot pocket.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."