Smasharoo wrote:
Granted, it is just an anecdote, but the homeless alliance in the vid linked claims a high percentage of peddlers are hardly homeless.
It's probably closer to half. 80% is an absurd number. We don't really have many of this kind of poor here in the worker's paradise, so I don't really have any anecdotal stories to share about it. Nexa probably sees a few in Boston, but it's more of a "I lost my bus faire, can you loan me $5 and I'll mail you a check" type of town.
You folks really lead a charmed life over there, isolated from the everyday horrors we little people are forced to contend with. Like terrorism for instance. According to that Beacon of Journalistic Integrity, the New York Post,
the "squeegee men are back terrorizing NYC streets!" I don't expect anyone to read the story because it really is too horrendous to dwell on the subject, but a few excerpts drive home the seriousness of this situation:
"the ultimate symbol of the lawlessness and blight of the 1980s and early 1990s," "sudden return is an ominous sign," "displaying a handful of crumpled dollar bills in his filthy, cracked fingers," “'When I seen that one, I was f- -king shocked,'†“'I’d rather be doing this than to go back to what I was doing before Giuliani came into office: pimping … selling drugs, all that.'â€
And, of course, the obligatory below the belt shot at the rival Daily News: "Benthins, who has also been seen with a squeegee near Times Square, was using a wadded-up copy of the amNewYork free newspaper as a rag. While the Daily News is best suited as a squeegee, at $1.25, it’s too expensive!" (Did you catch that? The Post's crack investigative journalists saw this guy in
two different places terrorizing people with his squeegee!)
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"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Hermann Goering, April 1946.