Tuesday Thought #1

Good News: Gary Neville Puts Homeless People Ahead Of Money

Gary Neville is a football player for the Manchester United but, well, this being my blog, and with what little I know of football, er, soccer, er, rugby, this isn’t about that.

Gary Neville is also kind of hot, but, again, this isn’t that kind of blog, at least on a regular basis, so this isn’t about that.

Gary Neville owns several properties in and around Manchester, and he recently allowed 30 homeless men to stay in one of his buildings; and he apparently liked it, because now he taken more steps to make their winter stays more comfortable.

Neville purchased the old Stock Exchange building in Manchester and wanted to turn it into a boutique hotel, with the renovation set to begin next February. But while awaiting for that work to begin, Neville, and another former Manchester United player, Ryan Giggs, phoned the Manchester Angels, a homeless advocacy group that lets homeless people know where there are vacant buildings they can use to sleep in at night, and told the group they wanted to allow homeless men and women the use of their building throughout the winter.

Manchester Angels announced that Neville and Giggs [right] are “paying for electricians; plumbers; builders and other tradesmen to come and install temporary shower units; bathrooms; toilets; lighting etc so that the building is habitable over the winter period.”

A cynic might say, "So what? He has an empty building. What's the big deal about letting homeless people sleep there?"

But Gary Neville wasn’t done yet; he has also arranged for the Hotel Football Old Trafford to make an evening meal for the homeless men on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays so that they get a well-balanced nutritious meal three times a week from his chefs.

In an age where entrepreneurs and businessmen seem to run along the lines of a Martin Shkreli — you know, the drug monster who is price-gouging AIDS patients — it’s remarkable to see someone set aside profit and, instead, actually spend a little money, to help out those less fortunate.

Good News Network

ISBL Asshat of the Week: Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers is your typical Republican who doesn’t want to help anyone, he wants them removed from sight.

At the mayor’s request, Colorado Springs city officials are working on an ordinance to ban people from sitting or lying on sidewalks, planters or anywhere else not specifically designed to be sat upon in downtown Colorado Springs and in Old Colorado City.

"I don't see this as a civil rights or human rights issue. No one ought to be able to lie on the sidewalk. We ought to make our sidewalks safe for passage so people don't feel obstructed or harassed. I just don't see that it's anti-homeless to say you can't lie or sit on sidewalks." — John Suthers

So, I’m guessing he’ll have police out in force to move people along who shouldn’t be sitting where there isn’t a chair, or lying down where there isn’t a clearly designated Please Lie Down Here sign. Of course, it might be just as easy to create places for people to sit, but sit it’s mostly homeless folks sitting there, why not just get rid of them and make the “rest of us” feel safer knowing that we don’t have to see homelessness and therefore don’t have to deal with it.

And, of course, keep in mind that may homeless are LGBTQ youth kicked out of their homes for being LGBTQ, so this is just a way to rid the streets of anyone who is heterosexual, I guess. And let’s not also forget that many homeless are vets, who returned from fighting overseas suffering from PTSD and cannot get adequate medical care — don’t get me started on that VA mess — and therefore have to live in the streets; move along, soldier.

And what makes this even mode disgusting, is that Suthers has made no effort to see about housing the homeless, finding them a place where they can sit down, or even lie down; he just wants them gone.

And there is evidence, even in Colorado, that it’s actually cheaper to house the homeless than to shoo them off the streets. The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless estimates that state taxpayers spend $43,240 per homeless individual — and 2012 estimates say there are 17,000 homeless people in the state — each year on everything from emergency health care to legal issues. But, if the state of Colorado were to provide places for the homeless to gather and sit and even sleep, the cost drops to just $16,813 per person, less than half the cost of leaving them on the streets.

But, Mayor John Suthers doesn’t care about that, possibly because homeless people don’t vote so they mean nothing to him.

Colorado Springs Mayor, and Republican, of course, John Suthers: the ISBL asshat of the Week.

Daily Kos

The Daily Hypocrite: George W. Bush

Most presidents make better former presidents than they do actual presidents, it seems. I mean, take a look at Jimmy Carter; better out of office than in office.

But, sometimes, well, you have a Bush … W, that is. I remember when he ran for office on the platform of being a “compassionate conservative” while telling The Gays to stay at the back of the marriage bus, and telling women that the GOP is in charge of vaginas, so, I got the conservative part, but I never understood where the compassion came into play.

And I still don’t.

As with the case of most former presidents, they tend to rake in the dough giving speeches to anyone and everyone who will listen, and, since leaving office W is no exception. He’s given more than 200 speeches since January 2009 and pockets anywhere from $100,000 to $175,000 per speech. Yes, that would be somewhere between $20 and $35 million dollars people, have paid to hear a monosyllabic “decider” talk.

But, we’re not talking paychecks alone, we’re also talking compassion. See, one of those speeches W recently gave was at a fundraiser for a homeless shelter in McKinney, Texas — yes, the same McKinney where cops beat up girls in bikinis but that’s not part of this story. Bush gave his speech, and pocketed $100,000.

“We paid his regular fee, which is $100,000. It was a hefty fee for us." — Lynne Sipiora, executive director of the Samaritan Inn homeless shelter

The Samaritan Inn isn't some penny ante operation, though, and they raised over a million dollars at this particular fundraiser. But, come on, W; it’s a homeless shelter and you took a check from them for $100,000, which I’m sure they could have used had you simple said, “I don’t need the money.”

And what about the fact that George W. Bush was president during one of the biggest financial crises in this country that left many people out of work, and many people, yes, homeless. Taking that $100,000 is the furthest thing from compassionate.

Sidenote: Politico spoke with W’s ‘people’ who made it clear that "none of what he makes when he does get paid goes anywhere other than his own bank account."

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, donated every single penny she made from speaking engagements to charity.

Just sayin’.

NCRM