Most people think that we have a well-meaning but imperfect government. I think it’s more useful to look at government as us versus them. Exhibit A:
He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It’s a reminder of how he has turned things around.
In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then, in a breathtakingly clueless move, an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month’s rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit.
(Via Don Surber, via Instapundit.)
On his own, this man pulls together a business and saves enough to get off the street, and the government of America’s most famously “liberal” city kicks him back out to the curb.
The good news is that, after a firestorm of bad publicity, the city of San Francisco relented in this case. Alas, most of our government’s outrages don’t get aired so broadly.
Internet Scofflaw 