Saturday, June 06, 2009

Pointy-headed Little Bureaucrats...

...Gotta love 'em:
He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It's a reminder of how he has turned things around.

In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then...an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month's rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit....

Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for Public Works, said the department's contact with Moore was meant to be "educational."
Well, it was that.
When Moore found the permit application, he got a money order and headed down to the appropriate department to pay. But because he didn't have a valid ID card, they wouldn't take his money.
Probably a Department of Homeland Security requirement. Those cans of shoe polish could contain explosives. IDs prevent that. Ask anyone in Public Works.
...Moore...insists that city functionaries are giving him a break because they are letting him continue to shine shoes while he waits for a copy of his birth certificate to be sent from Kansas.
Now THAT'S going way out on a limb for a common street criminal.

C.W. Nevius has the story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Putting the Sovereigns in their place

Ohio man arrested for obstruction for mowing unkempt grass at public park

SANDUSKY, Ohio (AP) -- An Ohio man arrested for obstruction for mowing unkempt grass said he just wanted to make his city look nice. John Hamilton said he took control of the situation because the grass in Sandusky's Central Park was about a foot high....

Police said they arrested 48-year-old Hamilton after he refused to stop mowing and charged him with obstructing official business and disorderly conduct.

City Manager Matt Kline...said budget cuts have left Sandusky understaffed for seasonal maintenance work.
And just what official business did he obstruct? The official business of letting the grass grow? Disobeying a ridiculous order from one of his servants? Disorderly conduct: Mowing the people's grass? Threatening non-existent park workers' non-existent jobs? Violating a municipal ordinance against doing servants' jobs for them? Except that mowing the grass wasn't the servants' job because there was no money to pay them for it?

Labels: , , ,

Monday, June 01, 2009

Evolution in Action

CAIRO (AP) -- A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.
Well, I guess that'll teach 'em. And it does beat strapping on a bomb vest...

Labels: