Category: Life

Saw this *parable on Facebook today:

The $50 Lesson

Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog. During our friendly conversation, I asked their little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?” She replied… “I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.” Her parents beamed with pride!

“Wow…what a worthy goal!” I said. “But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that!” I told her. “What do you mean?” she replied. So I told her, “You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I’ll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out and give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.”

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”

I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Her parents aren’t speaking to me anymore.

As usual, the comments were ridiculous and hateful – it scares me how ignorant people are sometimes.

And as usual, people took this parable way too literally. Pay attention, the moral is: help the homeless regain some self-respect without making them dependent. Training the homeless to become dependent on handouts and government programs is cruel and counter productive. Want to help a homeless person? Then help THEM help THEMSELVES.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Understand who the homeless are – Help dispel the stereotypes about the homeless. Learn about the different reasons for homelessness, and remember, every situation is unique.

Nobody aspires to be homeless – difficult and often times out-of-our-control circumstances lands people in a homeless situation. Try not to judge – you have no idea how, or why, the homeless person you see/interact with is where he/she is. I think oft times, we often assume it’s because the person is lazy, or a drug addict, or … whatever. And that might be the case, but until you know for sure, save your judgement.

2. Respect the homeless as individuals – Give the homeless people the same courtesy and respect you would accord your friends, your family, your employer. Treat them as you would wish to be treated if you needed assistance.

They’re people – not animals. ‘Nuff said.

3. Develop lists of shelters – Carry a card that lists local shelters so you can hand them out to the homeless. You can find shelters in your phone book.

LOVE this suggestion. Our country was built on charities – we have some of the most generous people in the world living in our country and there is always help around every corner – the challenge is finding it. Excellent suggestion.

4. Take extra food – It’s as simple as taking a few extra sandwiches when you go out. When you pass someone who asks for change, offer him or her something to eat. If you take a lunch, pack a little extra. When you eat at a restaurant, order something to take with you when you leave.

5. Give money – One of the most direct ways to aid the homeless is to give money. Donations to nonprofit organizations that serve the homeless go a long way.

Notice the article is not suggesting you give money to the person, but rather, give money to organizations that help the homeless. It’s way more effective and efficient and if the homeless person really wants your help, then he/she will gracefully accept it. I’m always suspicious of people who only want money. Money is easily expendable and if you’re supplying an addict, useless.

6. Donate clothing – Next time you do your spring or fall cleaning, keep an eye out for those clothes that you no longer wear. If these items are in good shape, gather them together and donate them to organizations that provide housing for the homeless.

7. Donate a bag of groceries – Load up a bag full of nonperishable groceries, and donate it to a food drive in your area. If your community doesn’t have a food drive, organize one. Contact your local soup kitchens, shelters, and homeless societies and ask what kind of food donations they would like.

8. Volunteer at a shelter – Shelters thrive on the work of volunteers, from those who sign people in, to those who serve meals, to others who counsel the homeless on where to get social services. For the homeless, a shelter can be as little as a place to sleep out of the rain or as much as a step forward to self-sufficiency.

9. Volunteer your professional services – No matter what you do for a living, you can help the homeless with your on-the-job talents and skills. Those with clerical skills can train those with little skills. Doctors, psychiatrists, counselors, and dentists can treat the homeless in clinics. Lawyers can help with legal concerns. The homeless’ needs are bountiful — your time and talent won’t be wasted.

10. Tutor homeless children – A tutor can make all the difference. Just having adult attention can spur children to do their best. Many programs exist in shelters, transitional housing programs, and schools that require interested volunteers. Or begin you own tutor volunteer corps at your local shelter. It takes nothing more than a little time.

11. Educate your children about the homeless – Help your children to see the homeless as people. If you do volunteer work, take your sons and daughters along so they can meet with homeless people and see what can be done to help them. Volunteer as a family in a soup kitchen or shelter. Suggest that they sort through the toys, books, and clothes they no longer use and donate them to organizations that assist the poor.

12. Employ the homeless – Help Wanted – General Office Work. Welfare recipient, parolee, ex-addict OK. Good salary, benefits. Will train. That’s the way Wildcat Service Corporations Supported Work Program invites the “unemployable” to learn to work and the program works! More than half the people who sign on find permanent, well-paying jobs, often in maintenance, construction, clerical, or security work.

Oh look, this last example leads us back to the parable.

Helping the homeless is not a Democrat or a Republican responsibility, it’s a human responsibility. However, even though sympathetic people may mean well by giving handouts, they are actually hurting the homeless in the long run. We need to shatter this illusion that we have built over the years that simply giving things away is the best way to “help” people – it’s not – it’s making people dependent. Programs are designed to HELP people, not SUPPORT people; why is this so hard to understand??

Let’s HELP our homeless get back on their feet. Let’s HELP our homeless become independent and self-sufficient again. Let’s HELP our homeless regain their pride.

*In case you don’t know what a parable is:

A parable is a short tale that illustrates universal truth, one of the simplest of narratives. It sketches a setting, describes an action, and shows the results. It often involves a character facing a moral dilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences. Though the meaning of a parable is often not explicitly stated, the meaning is not usually intended to be hidden or secret but on the contrary quite straightforward and obvious.

P.S. I should really take the time to edit before I publish a post – UGH – my apologizes.

Before I list the 20 facts, out of 70, that bug me the most, let me ask you a question: are you paying attention to what’s happening in our country? Are you??

I work with a gal who openly, and quite proudly, tells people that she’s not registered to vote, nor does she have any intention of registering to vote. This attitude just boggles my mind. I don’t understand people who prefer to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to something as important as government intrusion into our lives. I mean, I get that politics is an ugly and annoying part of our lives, but it’s also a necessary part of our lives and if we don’t take an active role in it, then who knows what our country will look like in twenty years.

And if, twenty years from now, our country is more socialist than republic then who do we have to blame for it?

The apathetic people. The people who aren’t registered, nor have any interest, in registering to vote their voice. Stop being lazy. Stop being a wuss. Stand up for what you believe in. And if people get upset by it? Tough. Grow a freaking backbone. It’s impossible to please everyone so stop trying. Vote your conscience and you know you’ve done all you can do from your end.

Anyway.

1. It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.

The poverty rate for children under age 18 increased to 22% in 2010, meaning more than 1 in 5 children in America are living in poverty. Meanwhile, the poverty rate for adults ages 18 to 64 rose to 13.7%.

For people 65 and older, the poverty rate was barely changed at 9%.

Following the recession, fewer young adults are moving out of their parents’ homes. Last year, 5.9 million young adults age 25 to 34 still lived with their folks, compared with 4.7 million before the recession

2. Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.

Dude. Think about that for a moment. Wow.

3. Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.

4. Americans buy 80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.

Wow. And that’s sad.

5. Credit card debt among Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket has risen by 81 percent since 1989.

6. Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about working TEN days without pay – let alone 107 days. That’s insane.

7. When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1580 an ounce.

8. Consumer debt in America has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971.

9. It is being projected that the Chinese economy will be larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2016.

10. The average American household spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.

11. The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.

12. Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

13. If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to totally pay it off.

At least we would be doing something to pay it off – that’s more than I can say now since we have a Democratic Senate too chicken sh*t to pass a budget.

What a bunch of whacks.

14. Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.

15. In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

16. This is the number of Americans currently on food stamps: 46,405,204. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.

17. In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.

18. Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.

19. China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.

20. Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.

Yep. Let’s re-elect this socialist so that we can continue our downward spiral – makes sense to me!!

WAKE UP, AMERICA!! OUR SITUATION IS NOT A LAUGHING MATTER!!