Eideard

A French health minister tried to tweet her way out of embarrassing blog advice that homeless people should not go outdoors during the ice-cold snap in Europe.

Junior minister Nora Berra was ridiculed on the Internet for writing a blog at the weekend saying toddlers, old people, the sick and homeless were particularly vulnerable in times of extreme cold and should “avoid going outdoors.”

Her note sparked a flurry of Twitter messages and media reports that she was suggesting the homeless not leave home…

Hundreds of people, many of them homeless, have been killed in recent days as bitterly cold weather sweeps Europe, with temperatures dropping to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) in parts of France.

The suggestion has been edited out. Of course, she won’t be too directly embarrassed because most homeless don’t have computers at hand to read her blog either. Or electricity.

 
On Tuesday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that local authorities in Orlando, Florida may restrict groups handing out free food to homeless people in city parks. But one organization doesn’t care.

Food Not Bombs, a loosely-knit group of independent collectives that serves free vegan and vegetarian food to all comers, says it will continue cooking such meals for Orlando’s homeless every Wednesday at Lake Eola, despite the law. “We’re going to do what we feel is right. They need food. Everyone deserves to be fed,” Gemma Thatcher told WFTV 9 in Orlando.

The Orlando ordinance in dispute requires groups serving food to more than 25 people in the downtown area to obtain a permit, with only two permits per year for each park issued to the groups.

The city argues that there is already a designated area for groups to feed the homeless, complete with benches and portable toilets. The only problem is…the area is locked up right now. In a news conference, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said Food Not Bombs can serve all the food it wants without a permit, so long as it does so outside the downtown area.

Food Not Bombs contends that food is a basic human right and that the group’s action is a form of free speech. The 11th Circuit Court agreed, saying that feeding hungry people in public spaces was an activity protected by the First Amendment. But the court ruled that the city of Orlando’s efforts to regulate such activity were also legitimate…

But what about the more pressing interest of making sure everyone in the city has enough to eat?

Food Not Bombs operates much the same way in San Francisco as it does in Orlando…local authorities in the City by the Bay, a decidedly more progressive bunch, allow the group to do its valuable work unmolested. It wasn’t always that way; members of the group were arrested more than 1,000 times in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the wise men and women who run San Francisco realized that there is no higher priority than feeding the hungry, and today Food Not Bombs is a respected institution that serves meals to the city’s needy five nights a week.

I hope the City of Orlando decides to creep up on the 21st Century and adopt a better attitude to their fellow human beings. There’s a reason it’s called “human-itarian”. Someone just needs to explain it to local politicians.

Thanks, Mr. Fusion

Two physicians were arrested Friday for allegedly subjecting mentally ill homeless people to unnecessary tests and other procedures at a North Hollywood clinic in order to submit fraudulent bills to government insurance programs.

Dr. Eleanor Santiago Arthur and Dr. Rodney Stephen Barron participated in a scheme in which “cappers” recruited Medicare and Medi-Cal enrollees from as far away as Long Beach and drove them to the Victory Boulevard clinic in exchange for a fee…

The “patients” were subjected to abdominal ultrasounds and other procedures that were unwarranted, the complaint says. In some instances, their blood was drained into unsanitary, open containers, it says. One official said the clinics submitted the blood for tests under multiple patients’ names so they could bill multiple times.

After the visits, the cappers drove the patients back to where they picked them up and paid them $100 each, according to the complaint.

The clinic billed the government for up to $1,000 worth of medical care per patient, and each physician saw 30 to 50 patients a day, city attorney’s officials said in a news release. The investigation carried out by the Los Angeles County Health Authority Law Enforcement Task Force found that the scheme cheated the government out of millions of dollars over six months.

Santiago Arthur and Barron each face up to seven years in prison if convicted of charges that they conspired to cheat Medicare and Medi-Cal, the government medical insurance programs for seniors, the poor and disabled.

These are the cruds protected by lobbyists, insurance companies and teabaggers.

Throw away the key!

Medical examiners have identified a mummified corpse that was left in a car’s passenger seat for 10 months in Southern California…

Authorities had said earlier it could take weeks to identify the homeless woman, but the Orange County coroner’s office was able to rehydrate the desiccated body’s fingertips to obtain a usable fingerprint, said Costa Mesa police Detective Sgt. Paul Beckman. The office will not release the name until next-of-kin are notified, he said.

The woman’s remains, discovered Monday in a car parked illegally in Costa Mesa, are little more than skin and bones and weigh 30 pounds, said police Sgt. Ed Everett.

The car’s driver befriended the homeless woman in a park in nearby Fountain Valley and told her she could sleep in the car. When she found the woman dead in the passenger seat, she was afraid to tell police, Everett said.

The driver is a 57-year-old former real estate agent from Corona del Mar, an upscale beach community, who herself had fallen on hard times and was living with friends, he said.

Authorities have not determined if the driver, whose name has been withheld, will face any charges in the case…

The driver had placed a box of baking soda in the car to mask the smell and covered the body with a blanket and some clothes, he said.

Officers found it Monday when they noticed a stench while responding to a call about an illegally parked vehicle.

Sometimes you need the really large economy size box of baking soda.

Photo from the article about the “reopening”

A homeless man allegedly broke into a California bar and served drinks to unsuspecting patrons all weekend — before police came calling.

The bar, called the Valencia Club, had gone out of business for some time and its liquor license had expired, police said this week.

But the suspect, Travis Lloyd Kevie, 29, somehow got into the California establishment in the Penryn area of Sacramento Valley last week. He reopened the bar using beer he bought from a nearby store.

Kevie allegedly started with a six-pack of beer and used money he received to buy more alcohol. He kept the bar open for a weekend serving about 30 customers a day, authorities said.

He was so successful that a local newspaper did a story about the bar reopening.

This was the follow-up story:

“As Detective Jim Hudson read the morning newspaper he recognized an individual pictured on the front page as a local transient who has had numerous contact with the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.”

He went to the bar to determine if Kevie had obtained a liquor license.

“When Detective Hudson arrived at the Valencia Club it was open for business with customers bellied up to the bar. Upon questioning Kevie Detective Hudson determined that he had no connection to the property and he did not have a liquor license,” the department said.

Kevie was arrested Tuesday and charged with burglary and selling liquor without a license…

The true American spirit of entrepreneurship. Or something like that.

As we have previously noted.

Juan-Carlos Cruz, the former host of Food Network’s “Calorie Commando” is accused of plotting to hire homeless people to carry out a murder…

The plan fell apart when the homeless people Cruz allegedly recruited told officers with the Santa Monica Police Department’s Homeless Liaison Program, authorities said.

“We’re very fortunate that we have a relationship and rapport with some of the homeless and that they were able to give us information,” Santa Monica police Sgt. Jay Trisler said.

An undercover investigation, which began on May 7, revealed the murder-for-hire method, where and when the individual was to be killed and the terms of payment, Trisler said…

Cruz, a Los Angeles resident, was an overweight pastry chef at Hotel Bel Air until he changed his focus to promote low-calorie recipes.

When his “Calorie Countdown” show debuted on the Food Network in 2004, he claimed to have lost 100 pounds by eating his own cooking.

Cruz is no longer listed among the celebrity chefs on the Food Network website.

Phew! Glad I missed his shows.

Think his recipes might turn me into a greedy source of self-serving violence? And would I have to register as a Republican instead of an Independent voter?

BTW – Griffin’s sentence will cost Florida taxpayers $450,000

A homeless alcoholic has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing milk and a box of Lucky Charms, authorities in Lakeland, Fla., said…

Mark Griffin’s most recent arrest came April 19 for stealing a $4.49 box of Lucky Charms cereal and a $1.59 can of milk from a Walgreens, police said. Griffin had been banned from the store previously.

A jury in August convicted Griffin of robbery and trespassing after he rejected a plea deal in which prosecutors offered a him a sentence of three years in prison and two years probation.

Acknowledging Griffin was a chronic alcoholic, Circuit Judge Donald Jacobsen said he was mandated by law to impose the 15-year prison sentence.

“Personally, I think the money could have been better spent in treatment than incarceration for 15 years, but that is not my decision,” Jacobsen said.

Of course. Readers outside the United States have to understand our politicians feel that thinking, evaluating, judging a punishment to fit the crime is too difficult a task for them to face. Why should they ask a “judge” to do so.

Most American voters would apparently agree; so, it works fine for the politicians.

Flames erupted from a homeless man when he was shocked by Lancaster, Ohio, police newly armed with stun guns.

Lancaster Police Chief David Bailey said two officers had to put out a fire on Daniel Wood, 31, a homeless man who allegedly had inhaled a chemical from a spray can to get high before he was stunned with Tasers, The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported. The department had just recently issued the stun guns to its officers.

“Clearly, this is not the way we’d hoped to get started,” Bailey said. “But I’m glad the suspect is OK, and this gives us an opportunity to review how we will do things from this point…”

“There was no recognition on the part of these officers that this would be the result,” Bailey told the Dispatch. “They didn’t know the vapor was present and would flash. … It wasn’t as if the suspect was doused in a chemical.”

Any dashboard cameras around for this?

The chief emerges from his tent to face the leaden morning light. It had been a rare, rough night in his homeless Brigadoon: a boozy brawl, the wielding of a knife taped to a stick. But the community handled it, he says with pride, his day’s first cigar already aglow.

By community he means 80 or so people living in tents on a spit of state land beside the dusky Providence River: Camp Runamuck, no certain address, downtown Providence.

Because the two men in the fight had violated the community’s written compact, they were escorted off the camp, away from the protection of an abandoned overpass. One was told we’ll discuss this in the morning; the other was voted off the island, his knife tossed into the river, his tent taken down.

The chief flicks his spent cigar into that same river. There is talk of rain tonight.

Behind him, the camp stirs. Other tent cities have sprung up recently around the country, but Rhode Island officials have never seen anything like this. A tea kettle sings…

The chief, John Freitas, is 55, with a gray beard touched by tobacco rust. He did prison time decades ago, worked for years as a factory supervisor, then became homeless for all the familiar, complicated reasons…

He and Ms. Kalil set up camp with another couple in early April. Word of it spread from the shelters to Kennedy Plaza downtown, where homeless people share the same empty Tim Hortons cup to pose as customers worthy of visiting that doughnut chain’s restroom. The camp became 10 people, then 15, then 25. No children allowed.

“I was always considered the leader, the chief,” Mr. Freitas says. “I was the one consulted about ‘Where should I put my tent?’ ”…

The community also established a five-member leadership council and a compact that read in part: “No one person shall be greater than the will of the whole.”

RTFA. All I’ve put in place is a portion of how it begins.

Communal survival is generally more successful than solo – at least for greater numbers of people. In a time like ours, with growing numbers of homeless, the collective solutions hold more promise. This is just one of those tales – about human beings – in case you forgot.

American-style pushcart

A homeless South Korean man died of cancer without being able to use a single penny of his life savings of $100,000 because he could not prove his identity to his bank…

“He never begged. When people offered him help, he said he had money saved and didn’t need help,” Yoo Joon-soo, a district official in Yongbong, said by telephone. “He said he was going to buy a house.” In mid-April, he looked so fragile that Mr. Yoo and others ignored his protests and called an ambulance. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

The man then told the officials that his name was Na Hae-dong and that he had been born May 23, 1953, two months before the Korean War ended…

Mr. Na had 128 million won in a bank account opened under his name decades ago. But in 1993, South Korea introduced an anti-corruption law that required an account holder to prove that the account had been opened under the holder’s real name before withdrawing money. People were given a grace period during which they could transfer their money to real-name accounts.

Apparently, Mr. Na had never heard of the law. But he had continued depositing his few earnings into the account. When he went to his bank after the cancer had been diagnosed, however, he could not take out his savings because, officially, he did not exist.

Local officials filed for court approval to give him an identity. But before the court ruled, Mr. Na died in the hospital on April 28.

His savings will be donated to the state. He had nothing else but his cart, a wristwatch and a quilt.