Thirty-three cities now ban or are considering banning giving food to homeless people — and some are threatening to throw people in jail in they're caught feeding the hungry.Visit this link to sign a petition against this monstrous behavior. (Ignore the Facebook rigamarole.)
These laws claim they're about preventing government-run anti-homelessness programs from being diluted. They're really about keeping non-profits and individuals from shining a light on just how bad things have gotten for our country's poor, even as the homeless are treated like criminals for being without food and shelter.
Charity work like sharing food with the homeless is essential in a country where protecting the poor and needy is never at the top of the list, and is found to help those without shelter get back on their feet.
"Cities think by cutting off the food source, it will make the homeless go away," NCH community organizing director Michael Stoops said. "It doesn't."
On another front: A lot of my readers don't like Obamacare, but it seems to be working.
But if you look beyond the political fights, the picture looks very different. Obamacare is, policy-wise, having a great month — maybe even the law's best month ever.
Some of it has to do with the part of the law that we all know the best — the coverage expansion to millions of Americans. Study after study shows that the Affordable Care Act has increased the number of Americans with health insurance.
Health care costs grew at their slowest rate ever in 2013 — in part due to Obamacare's spending cuts — according to a recent study in Health Affairs. And hospitals have been making fewer deadly medical errors since the Affordable Care Act began cutting Medicare reimbursements for institutions with lots of errors.Although O-care is far from an ideal system, what we have now is better than what we had before. Let's not let our dream of the ideal endanger something that seems to be improving the lives of millions of people.
For all my many criticisms of Barack Obama, I think he deserves applause on this score.
4 comments:
Its what Jesus would have done .... isn't it?
Harry
So the city authorities are going to tell the Catholic church, and other religious organisations, to shut their soup kitchens?
In my locality the City tried to criminalize food outreach on grounds that the samaritans did not have health department food permits. They wanted the samaritans to turn their food over the public agencies to hand out to the hungry.
The samaritans asked if the public agencies had food permits. It turned out they didn't.
Applause? Hmm. I wouldn't go quite that far. I'd say it should count as sufficient reason that his life be spared when the surviving members of this administration and the one before it are put on trial.
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