HEY BROTHER, I TOO WANT TO BE A PART OF THE HYPOCRISY

[Psycho]

HEY BROTHER, I TOO WANT TO BE A PART OF THE HYPOCRISY

 

 

Please correct me good people if I am wrong, but didn’t Mayor Williams and some members of our city council come up with this plan to eradicate homelessness in the District by 2008 or 2010?

 

Since this announcement, I believe the local news media has informed us that the number of homeless people (25% of them being children) has risen. Yet, Mayor Williams, mayor elect Fenty, members of the DC City Council and incoming members did not touch upon this issue in their campaigning if anybody was paying attention. Most addressed issues that concerned the “haves” and not the “have-nots”.

 

I understand that the homeless problem is a complicated issue or at least some would want to make us believe it is.

 

Why has this problem drifted far from our social conscience radar in the last year or so?

 

When I cruise the various message boards, list servers or other places where people express their feelings on issues of concern, all I see is people complaining about the impact this or that will have on their $550,000.00 home, the silly insurance rates on their $45,000.00 car, how they are having problems in paying the tuition for their children’s’ private schooling in order not to have to place them in one of those dreaded DC public schools or where can I get a manicure for under $100.

 

Sure there is that annual Walk-A-Thon for the Homeless but a careful analysis of it shows that the money taken in would only feed 1,000 people a single meal. As for most of those non-profit groups who claim to be helping the homeless are in truth working hard on keeping themselves from being homeless with $100,000 salaries for their directors and high salaries for all within the operation but little of their income really going to help those they say they care about.

 

Forgive me for ranting as I forgot that paying our already employed members of the city council an additional $92,000 a year on top of a salary they already have which is higher 80% of 71% of all workers in DC make is a far better way of spending my tax dollars.

 

Of course, I think my tax dollars would go further continuing to catch the director of the DC Office of Campaign Finance Cecily Collier-Montgomery at a mall in Silver Spring during normal DC OCF office hours with various bags full of goodies while her staff back in DC lies about her whereabouts. She is trying not to look homeless thanks to Hecht’s.

 

Here is my suggestion to our mayor elect and city council in 2007. Let’s cancel all planned pay raises for everyone in DC Government and take what we would have given and give it to a few and real charities that do actually help the homeless and let’s put a smile on the faces of people who rarely smile than on the face of an over-paid DC Government official when emerging from the BMW dealer or Hecht’s!