Banning Home Cooked Meals for the Homeless
Fairfax County, Virginia wants to keep the homeless from getting food posioning. Maybe they overlooked the fact that they will keep the homeless from getting food too. Here’s Jonah Goldberg’s take from the corner.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Oh, this is appalling, but not surprising.
The original story in the Washington Post is very good.
It referenced some officious gasbag saying homeless people are especially “vulnerable” to sickness. First — I’d say people who survive what they do are especially INvulnerable! Second, enough theory, how about facts? I searched it for some incident in which someone — anyone — eating a meal at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen actually got food poisoning . . . what are the odds, if it actually happened, that it would have been left out?
Wasn’t there. Hmmm.
The article said the bureaucrats “got a complaint.” What was the complaint? Who complained?
Have you ever eaten in a soup kitchen? I have — when I’ve helped at one (not very often), I’ve tried the food. It’s not fancy (to appeal to everyone, it won’t have much spicing; because many homeless folks have poor teeth, it tends to be soft; because soup kitchens do their work on a shoestring, they use a lot of noodles — just like my family of seven), but it definitely is homey.
Smart soup kitchens have a rule — the people who serve the food, eat the same food. Makes a lot of sense.
When I lived there, my fellow knuckle-draggers called it “Fairfascist County.” (The recycling nazis wanted a law that made it illegal for kids, anyone, to pick aluminum cans out of bins placed on the curb!) There you have it.
November 30th, 2006 at 8:10 am
“When I lived there, my fellow knuckle-draggers called it ‘Fairfascist County.’”
I wasn’t going to chime in, but now that you’ve let the cat out of the bag, Father, I feel more comfortable.
I’ve lived in the DC area for 25 years and never been tempted to move to Northern VA. Of course I couldn’t afford it, but even so, it’s over-developed, over-regulated, and generally too strange for my tastes. You can go from flag-burning to book-burning by driving a couple of blocks.
November 30th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Grover:
Actually, I liked living in Northern Virginia very much. I’d rather have lived in Arlington or Alexandria, but I couldn’t afford being so close in. The thing I hated most about NoVa was the way so many roads were designed on what I call a “feeder” system — developments had lots and lots of streets feeding onto a main avenue, which in turn fed onto Rt. 50, or Rt. 7, etc. The result, of course, is very pleasant communities inside the development, but intense backups where they “fed in.” I favor more of a grid system.