Have you ever been asked this by some random panhandler? A good response is 'Sorry, I only carry hundreds.' It gets em every time. Here in New York, there are a particularly annoying group of people with tables who yell at everyone who passes 'Can't you find it in your heart to give to the homeless?'. Considering New York has laws that guarantee shelter and food for the homeless, Glenn has long been suspicious of these tables and finally got some long awaited confirmation. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/33511/
GLENN: May I give the story, just in time for the holidays. State authorities are going for the jugular. (Laughing). Seeking to banish forever the panhandling pests who clog Manhattan's busiest corners with folding tables and plastic water bottles. Believe me, if you are in some place else in the country, this, this story is going to be worth it to you. Because it is the definition of the progressive movement. State attorney general Andrew Cuomo filed suit yesterday charging United Homeless Organization is a scam run by con artists who pocket most of the change they collect. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I know this to be true because I have pictures of them taking the money. The beggars, most of whom claim to be street people, say that the money tossed into their jugs go to the homeless. It does, the suit says. They just don't bother to tell you that they're talking about themselves. UHO founder Stephen Riley and director Myra Walker take a big cut of the money to fund personal shopping sprees at Gamestop, Home Shopping Network, Bed, Bath & Beyond, P. C. Richard, as well as their monthly cable bills, legal papers charge. Riley, the co‑founder of this organization, is a beefy 60‑year‑old who shamelessly used the donated dollars which are supposed to be used to feed the... "Doesn't anybody have a heart to help feed the homeless?" He used the money to pay for his Weight Watchers food.
STU: That's unreal. Unreal.
PAT: That's great.
GLENN: This is ‑‑ now so you understand, you can't just set up a table in New York. No, no, no. You need license, you need a license, you need everything else. So unless you're going to be busted, you have to have city approval to be on the streets.
Stu, you are looking like ‑‑
STU: I don't know if that's made clear in this article. They do pay a fee to the organization which is licensed. So I think that it does essentially, yeah. Indirectly.
GLENN: The organization has to be licensed by the city, yeah. I mean, you'll have ‑‑ these guys have to have a license on them, whether they got it or the city ‑‑ or the organization got it is irrelevant. But you just don't set up a table and sell Snickers bars, you know, for your Cub Scouts in New York.
STU: Right.
GLENN: You don't do it. You need a license.
PAT: So the guy with the purses is licensed?
GLENN: No, the guy with the purses ‑‑
STU: Probably not.
PAT: Because that ‑‑
GLENN: If you'll notice, that guy has ‑‑ usually they set them up on the ground and they are on like a big, like a big sheet, like a big black sheet.
PAT: Okay, yeah.
GLENN: Okay? That's so they can pick up the four corners.
PAT: And go when they need to?
GLENN: And run when she see a cop.
PAT: What about shoe shine guy? Licensed?
GLENN: Yeah, licensed.
PAT: Him I like.
STU: Mr. Softy?
GLENN: Mr. Shoe shine guy is nice.
PAT: He is great.
GLENN: We walk by him every day.
PAT: He's yelling at everybody, "You are coming like that to Midtown Manhattan? You don't look like that. With those shoes? Those don't work in Mid ‑‑ you are in the big time now!" I love that guy, love that guy.
GLENN: He is fantastic. He, I've actually had my shoes shined by this guy. They don't need to be shined because he yells at you every day. He is like, you are a disgrace!
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: You are a disgrace, wearing those shoes ‑‑
PAT: In Midtown Manhattan!
GLENN: You are a disgrace!
PAT: Great.
GLENN: It's fantastic.
PAT: Great.
GLENN: Anyway, so this is a con. Now, here's why I say this is a quintessential example of progressivism. First of all, the progressive New York would like to give licenses to this organization. So this organization goes and does this. Anybody who lives in New York knows it's a sham. They know it's a con. But the city doesn't do anything about it.
STU: Yeah, it's really for no other reason other than it really seems like a con. Like I didn't have any evidence. You saw pictures.
GLENN: It's a con. You can sense it. Your gut. I've lived here for how many years now? Four years, five years? I knew this was a con about the third week I got here. I put in money, and Adam said to me ‑‑ I remember. I was walking, and I was walking by and I reached into my pocket and had I think a $20 bill and I put it in there and Adam said, "Sucker." And I said, you know what? I'm just going to let it go. What they do with the money's their own business. And then every day I walk by it and I'm like, something's wrong with that. And then started, you know, taking pictures of them taking the money and putting it into their own pockets.
Now, I can't be the only one in New York, and the City of New York has decided that a good jobs program is to institutionalize panhandling. The only difference between somebody saying, "Hey, man, can you spare some change" and these people is the table. Because what's the difference between walking by somebody every day who's standing in the same place every single day going, "Oh, come on, can you spare some change, man? I'm just trying to get a place to sleep," and passing somebody with a table that says to you every day, "Doesn't anybody have the heart." They are both getting the money.
