I don't even know what's going on but it looks like the ACLU brings ppl together so Ima ship them a matching donation.

We started giving hand-me-downs to the local homeless outreach group and the stuff is never wasted. People who need decent clothing the most can't even afford thrift stores.

Hmmmmm………..not a bad idea. Problem is that I live in a tucked away corner on the East side of Metro-Phoenix and from what google shows it would be a long drive:

http://www.homelessshelterdirectory....ounty&state=AZ

So we've been giving things to the cleaning ladies (I didn't mention that they are all Mexican but ppl might've guessed) and I figure that they don't make all that much and they likely have an extended family that could use our unused clothing and things or maybe ship them to relatives in Mexico. They are certainly happy to get what we give them.

Last thing I gave them was a $90 hair clipper I bought. Years back I tried the buzzed off look which suited me but I was spending a lot at the hair cutters so I bought a good clipper bec how hard could it be, right? Turns out that it was a damn pita. I even bought the cover that the hair places put on you.

Here's an interesting thing I noticed one day at Goodwill: There was a Mexican looking guy w/ a pick-up that he'd added high sides to and even a bin over the driver's cab and he was filling it to the brim w/ stuff from the Goodwill. My bet was that this was his business: Buy stuff cheap from Goodwill (and picking my town was a really smart move bec the town's well to do and they have good merchandise) then drive it down to Mexico and sell it in his shop. Pretty good business plan, imo.

Howard, Call them if you think you wanna give that way and they may come to you. My experience working with people who directly help the homeless is that they will walk through fire to do it. However giving to the cleaning staff who seem eager to accept sounds like a winning plan as well.

I like your idea as well. I could ship via UPS maybe bec while they might drive all this way it'd be a waste of a lot of gas money. And, yeah, the cleaning ladies really appreciate what we give them and I think that they put it to good use.

HB.... You are a billionaire giving away endless amounts of monbiez to minorities?

Hardly, but I sure did give a lot of time both working and volunteering. Thing is is that ppl knowing what I did prob think it made me rich but it didn't, not nearly. The best analogy would be to that of a prospector who, for years, kept thinking 'one more hill, I'll just try over that next hill.' W/ us is was 'next year, we'll do good next year.' Don't get me wrong, I made a living, but nothing to brag about. Entire neighborhoods in NYC became gentrified (which is considered a very bad thing in some circles but all it really means is that working ppl moved in), and still are, but not for us. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to get rid of the tenants on welfare, I just wanted to have tenants that actually paid the rent and I kept praying 'Please, God, send me ppl w/ jobs, anybody, just let them have a job.' And in case anybody thinks that I could've jacked up the rents if working ppl showed up that is wrong bec all of our units had the rent increases set by the City's Rent Stabilization Board.

lol, we had many tenants w/ jobs but not nearly enough. PPL reading this thread should know something that they may have never thought of: You ppl that have jobs and rent do this: You wake up, sit on the toilet, turn on the faucet, brush your teeth, take a shower, get dressed, get something out of the fridge, open the front door and go to work. Come home and the front door opens and closes again, you use the toilet a couple of times, do w/e and go to bed. Tenants w/o jobs are home all day: the faucets are turned on who knows how many times, the front door is opening and closing all day, the shower runs multiple times/day. IOW, the wear and tear is much higher. And even THAT would've been fine if the tenants paid the rent. I had Sec 8 tenants whose share of the rent was 50 cents or maybe $15 and they wouldn't even pay that. I spent God knows how long in NYC Housing Court, the last true outpost of Communists in the world.

Here's another couple of stories: The DA's office started a policy of forcing landlords to evict criminal tenants. If you ask me why I couldn't do it myself the answer is that there is almost NO WAY to evict a tenant in NYC if they pay the rent. So the drug dealers always paid the rent. You might further ask 'well at least you could wait until the lease was up and not renew it.' Nope, all tenants must be offered a renewal. Anyway, one day we get a letter from the DA that says we have to evict a tenant bec bullets came flying from their apartment into the next one and almost killed somebody. They send (or sent if they're still doing it) verifying documents to use. We go to court, the tenant says that it wasn't her fault bec it was her daughter's boyfriend who did it. The judge comes out w/: 'We are Jews. We have to remember that we are Jews and we can't just throw ppl out into the street.' I looked at my Jew lawyer and he shrugged his shoulder.

Another time I had a super that became a drug dealer. He lived w/ his wife who had the lease in her name. She comes to me and says she needs repairs. I say wtf? I paid your husband for years to be the super and he didn't do the repairs that I paid him to do? Plus he's a drug dealer? I'm not going to do it. So she goes to court to force me to do them (I shouldn't have been stubborn since I could never win) and I tell the judge 'Her husband's a drug dealer. What if my workers are in her apartment and other criminals show up to rob the apartment and they get killed?' Pretty good argument, right? So the judge becomes nearly hysterical and yells at me 'You can't hurl baseless accusations like that! You can't prove that her husband is a drug dealer!' So I say 'why don't you ask his wife? She's sitting right here.' So the judge asks 'Is your husband a drug dealer?' and she answers 'Sure, but that's on the corner, not in the apartment.' The judge gets up, leans over the bench, sticks his finger in her face and says 'If his workers get killed in your apartment you're going to be in a lot of trouble.'

loooooooooooollllllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I like to tell stories but they are good ones and you ppl are just going to have to put up w/ them. Check out my B-Day thread, there are more. Ex super was Puerto Rican, btw, in case anybody thinks that I only gave Black ppl a hard time. Heh.

I know HB, I was being sarcastic to gambools comment about how Donald sterling got awards too.

That's k's stock move Just clever enough to not say racist stuff himself, always chipping in from the sidelines functionally sticking up for racists/loling at people who call them out.

Guys, I walked on the same side of the street as a minority and didn't get scared.

/howard

Guys, I bought a Chalupa from a Hispanic. Didn't get scared.

/howard

Who has two thumbs and just played poker where one of the players was a minority? THIS GUY

/howard

Hello, Dids, my little dumpling. I'll make you an offer: $50 to your favorite charity if you answer 'Howard is right' to my next post.

I'll tell you what, Gene, this thread reminds me of something the Macho Man once said to the Hulkster. Macho said, "Hulk, those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's no one's business what the Hulkster is carrying in his spandex shorts. No Real American wants to go rummaging through there, brother.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/21/justic...html?hpt=hp_t2

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy blamed weak gun laws for the spurt of holiday violence.

"There has to come a tipping point where this changes," McCarthy said then of the violence. "The illogical nature of what's happening here -- that government can intercede and prevent this from happening is overwhelming. And I refuse to think otherwise in a great country like America that we can continue to allow this to happen -- not just on a state, but on a federal level."

Why wouldn't they just point out a few area's within the cities (based on for example crime stats) where the stop and frisk searches would be held ? Seems way more efficient to me tbh. (re:stop and frisking rich white guys in well off neighborhoods or whatever someone said above).

Tbh Im a bit lost sometimes in US law, wtf is wrong with 100% control points for traffic or other kind of violations ? We have those regularly here and its no big deal at all. Sure its going to suck slightly when you have scissors with you in the car for some totally legit reason but most weapons they take out of those cars are not household scissors.

Obviously banning guns would be the smarter move but as said, I guess thats on a totally different level of law making.

Chicago's mayor has been reduced to impotent platitudes:


"Our kids only get heard when there is a shot, be it a basketball shot or a bullet shot. There are other kids out there," Emanuel said at the meeting.
"Everybody says, 'So what are you going to do?' As if there's a single thing that's going to resolve this problem," Emanuel said. "It is a communitywide problem, which requires a communitywide solution."

Google 'anti-loitering laws' and you get this so that potential solution is unavailable as well.

But the critics of Stop and Frisk have their point as well: As practiced it was unconstitutional. Whether the death toll reaches a point where opponents will seek a way to configure it so that it can pass the constitutional tests only time will tell.

I'm on team stricter gun laws, not a fan of illegal, discriminatory searches.

That's an understandable position but stricter gun laws are essentially off the table as well. I mean you can have stricter laws against illegally owning/carrying a gun but there are already who knows how many out there and the gun rights activists are apparently too strong to get any meaningful changes to gun laws overall.

Howard, if it makes it easier to think about this, we aren't changing the constitution any sooner than we're changing gun laws so put stop and frisk policies in the same bucket as changing gun laws in terms of finding a solution.

I'm not so sure we'd have to change the constitution but essentially you are right and I will give it up.

And if the death toll rises higher, the tipping point will result in gun laws tightening up, not stop and frisk (God willing).

The death toll is already sickeningly high and I doubt the gun laws get tightened up at all near term, if ever, God or no God. In our town there is a raffle going on for an AR15, ffs, and an ad for an AR10 from someplace else. Crossroads of the West gunshow has a regular stop in Phoenix. If it wasn't such a drive I'd go for the lolz. Look at this:




AFAIK, there is some kind of gun show loophole.

We also had a similar case to the last linked article. We had two buildings across the street from each other, stray went through a window, and killed a girl sleeping in bed. A gang member was killed which I know bec w/i a couple of days an 'in memorial' portrait was painted on the side of one of the buildings. These were ubiquitous throughout the South and West Bronx and were very well done. The few I found on images don't do them justice. I supposed that there was a truce while they were being painted and that the artists (there couldn't have been that many so talented) enjoyed some kind of immunity. At any rate the super called me to ask if he should paint it over and I said 'Only if you want to be killed.' Me, too, maybe.

But wait, the same guy said the murder rate was down just last April:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/24/us/chicago-violence/

There are also plenty of cities with an even higher murder rate:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/07/...united-states/

So it sounds like someone is just using this as an excuse to drum up support for more gun laws. Chicago already had some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. To the point that some of them were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Even so, Chicago still has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation.

And yet, in Phoenix, where you can carry your legally owned gun concealed WITHOUT A PERMIT, the murder rate is less than half of Chicago's. More gun laws are not the answer for Chicago.

Lol stop and frisk? Come on. The inner city gun violence comes from a struggle for resources and the only way to stop that is to address the issue of poverty in urban areas holistically. It's embarrassing that with all the wealth in the USA there are still areas that could easily be confused for Somalia.

Legalizing drugs would have a huge impact but then people would just be more hungry.