Do you ever get tired of going from block to block in your city and on almost every block, encountering some poor, ragged schmuck with a sign that plays upon your heartstrings, begging for help lest they die? Have you started to feel put upon by the army of homeless who lurk about every stoplight needing a handout? Does it wear you out because you want to help people, but you realize that if you give something to every person at every corner at which you stop, pretty soon you will be in bad shape yourself?

I understand. I struggle with this myself, hating to not give aid to people who appear to have  been run over by life and have nowhere else to go. Not only that, it is a command of our Lord to help those in need, and the Church teaches it as a Corporal Work of Mercy, something we are to do as part of our faith. But I am ashamed to confess that sometimes when I am approached the fifth time at a street corner by man or woman with their poorly scrawled cardboard sign, I sigh and think, “Oh God, not another one!”

I don’t always have time to talk to the strangers I help, but I have from time to time, at some particularly long stop light, engaged the person asking for help. Despite what the right-wing radio jocks say about the poor being lazy and shiftless, I have heard stories that make me seethe with anger at our government and the worthless organizations who are supposed to be helping those in need.

Men like Tony.

I never learned Tony’s last name. He was a regular at the corner of W. Patapsco Avenue and Washington Boulevard in Baltimore. I would see him standing at the bottom of the long hill coming down from S. Caton Avenue, going from car to car with his ragged cardboard sign which announced to the world that he was a veteran down on his luck. Any time I went to Baltimore to take care of my customers he was there – in the heat of the summer or in some of the worst winter conditions you can imagine.

“Tony! It’s miserable out here!” It was below freezing and raining. Tony was bundled up in a ragged yellow poncho.  “Why don’t you go home?”  He mumbled something about needing the money and gave me a smile. He was always friendly, no matter how he felt or the weather he had to endure.

He had a flea-bag room somewhere that he told me he shared with another man who was equally destitute.  They begged and they scraped up enough to get by from month to month. Tony did this because the Veteran’s Administration had him all tangled up in paperwork they couldn’t seem to resolve. I guess when you have a comfy cubicle in some office somewhere, with a nice water cooler, a soda machine, maybe a refrigerator with your lunch in it, getting a veteran out of the cold and solving his problems is not that urgent.

Sometimes I would be the sixth or seventh car in line to turn left at Washington Boulevard and head west. As the line of vehicles crept closer to the light, I watched car after car go by without stopping to offer even a dollar.

A dollar. Would it kill you to offer a dollar?  Would it ruin your day?

I never had the time to get into the details of whether Tony had a pension or Social Security. And I never will know. A car came flying down S. Caton Avenue one day, ran through the intersection up onto the curb where Tony was standing and killed him instantly. Maybe he should have been more aggressive with the system that owed him something for his service to our country, but I can’t help but feel that something is wrong with our system when he was just one of so many veterans who are not being cared for. A few years back how the veterans were being treated became a bit of a scandal. Now it has dropped off the radar. It is our government, giving veterans the finger instead of the support they promised.

Then there is my friend in Milwaukee. To protect her privacy, I will call her Anna. Anna has been through hell on earth, starting with a doctor who should have lost his license long before he actually did. He operated on Anna’s back and damn near killed her because his work was so sloppy. She wound up partially paralyzed from the waist down, was transferred to a nursing home which also should have been closed down long before they were. A judgment against them for a billion dollars ($834 million, to be exact) has shut their doors for good, but too late to help Anna. That was long after the attendants there left Anna in a solitary room with no one to care for her. She told me she was sure she was going to die. To this day I don’t know how she managed to get out of there and return home, unable to walk without the help of a walker and crutches.

Anna is one tough lady, a fighter who refused to give up or give in. Through constant self-help, using all her knowledge and pluck, she has come to the point where she can pretty much get around herself.

“Why don’t you sue the shorts off these people?” I asked one day, angered beyond measure at how she had been treated.  “You certainly have a case!”

“Doesn’t work that way,” she replied matter-of-factly. “This is a good-ole-boys club up here. No one wants to buck the system.”  She informed me that she had presented her case to a number of law firms in Milwaukee. No one was interested. Perhaps they didn’t see enough money in it for themselves. Legal indignation comes with a price, and she couldn’t come up with the fee.

Then there are the rotten scoundrels at her bank. Anna has lived in her house for 20 years. Paying the mortgage for that long has resulted in a nice little piece of equity in her house. But because she is on Social Security disability payments, the banks all claim that she doesn’t have enough income to refinance her house to a lower interest rate and get the equity in her hands.

Think this through with me. She could cut about 3 percentage points off her mortgage, get about $100,000 in equity out of the loan, and still pay $100 less per month to the banks, which would help her tight personal finances in a very real way. Sounds like a real win-win, doesn’t it?

Not to them dirtbags in the Brooks Brothers suits and ties. Neeeeeeeoooooowww…..we can’t do that because we have “regulations” we have to meet. The regulations that were put in place in 2008 after Wall Street and the big banks indulged themselves in an orgy of bad loans and then turned around and demanded that the government bail them out.  This is another thing that drives me out of my mind. No one seems to want to listen to other people on a personal level. Fill out the paperwork, leave it on my desk, and we’ll see if you “qualify” after we run it through the computer. I am not supposed to say this as a Christian, but anyone and everyone who treats people the way Anna has been treated – I hope they spend a long time in hell and get the extra-crispy room.

No, wait, I have something better. I hope they lose their job and wind up in Anna’s position and have to watch some stiff-necked little turd of a human being look down his nose at them and tell them they can’t be helped while giving them the same condescending smile that Anna has had to endure every time she has asked for their help.

And then there is her Medicare and Social Security Disability payments. Do you think they would let her rent out her two upper rooms to her house so as to make her life a little bit better? Not on your life! Any extra income would immediate suspend the government helps and put her in the negative side of the ledger. This is not about helping people, this is about keeping them dependent on you. If our government really cared, they would say,  “We are delighted that you can  add a few extra dollars to our help and have a better life.”  

And as if all that was not bad enough, as if insult had not already been piled onto injury, the lovely local electric company decided that Anna had not quite suffered enough. A couple of years ago, Anna called them and asked them to come out and remove the two electric meters that calculated the electricity used in the two unused upstairs apartments. They demanded money that she simply did not have – so they stayed in place and WE Energy happily tacked $50 a month on her bill every month until November of 2017 when, unwarned and unannounced, they cut off her electricity and presented her with a bill for $1,200!  She managed to borrow the money to get the electric back on, but what if she didn’t have this friend to turn to? Is this the way that companies should be allowed to treat the poor? Do any of these people realize that one day they will stand before God and be demanded an explanation for such atrocious behavior towards those who are in such need?

Thank you, WE Energy and the banks of Milwaukee, for giving my friend the finger.

*Right after I published this blog piece, I found this article  which explains exactly the thing very thing I have been on a rant about.  Perfect!

Then there is Calvin, a gentleman I met one day when he approached me for help in the parking lot of the Giant Market International Food Store. He had personal problems and had left Florida a few days before the hurricane ripped through the West Coast and destroyed everything in sight. He had nothing and was looking for a few dollars. I’ve been working with him to help him get settled down, and the bullshit he has had to put up with would drive a saint into spasms of anger. After finally getting a job with his old union, he found a place to live in Southern Maryland. Having settled in, I gave him a sheet of references to local churches and help organizations which could possibly provide him with food and rent assistance.

So far, Calvin has been shuffled from one office to the next, filled out one form after another, and still is in need of monetary help and food. Do any of these people understand that Calvin is hungry today?  I bet if they were without anything to eat they would expect someone to move mountains for them to get a cup of soup and a sandwich right freakin’ NOW!!!!  But as I said before, when you are on the warm side of the desk and your belly is full – meaaaah, not so much!

The most egregious example of this came when Calvin attended church with a lady he had met through one of Calvin’s old friends. Calvin is deeply religious and church is important to him.  Too bad for Calvin that he is not important to them.  When this lady presented Calvin to the pastor, asking for a few dollars to put gas in the ratty old car he putts around in, they were told that such disbursements are done “only by a committee that meets twice a month.”

Really? Show me in the Gospel where Jesus said that this is how we are to treat the poor and needy? Jesus said that if you have two coats and a man comes in need of a coat, you give it to him. You don’t go to a committee and bat around the idea. You give the poor man what you have so that his need is met.

In other words, pastor, reach into your own pocket, you damn cheapskate, and help out this poor man standing in front of you!!!!!

Pastor, do you realize you just gave Calvin the finger?

In the small, central Virginia town of Orange,  a man and his wife have purchased an old hotel and are working to restore it. Aided by the Knights of Columbus and individual volunteers, the broken down rooms have been restored to cheerful living spaces painted in bright colors to welcome young women who are pregnant and have no place to go. Instead of helping four or five women with the two houses they currently operate, they will be able to offer 23 brightly painted rooms, as well as educational programs and other helps designed to aid young women in changing the direction of their lives.

You would think such an endeavor would meet with enthusiastic approval from people, but instead, Randy has been told that the rear fire escape which while being old, is quite sturdy and only needs a nice coat of paint, must be replaced. This will cost $35,000, money that must be raised before the place can open. In my opinion, there is no reason for this other than the psychological poverty of a small-town hick fire marshal who needs to feel that he wields some authority in his otherwise pathetic little life. I’ve seen this before. You give an insignificant person a badge and a title and he becomes a terror.

Then, after some sicko tired to burn the place to the ground, failing only because the torch he threw into a corner window, onto hay he had thrown in the room,  was put out by the sprinkler system, the insurance company did everything they could to pay as little as possible for the damage to the two rooms. This is yet another setback to opening a place which will offer real help to those in need.

Try to help people and watch folks line up to give you the finger.

Yeah, I’m mad. This is my blog and my rant, so I will let my feelings be known. I am beyond disgusted at how I have seen Tony, Anna, Calvin, and Randy treated. I have no doubt at all that hundreds, or more probably thousands, of similar examples exist all across our fruited plain. The bottom line is this:

DON’T BOTHER US. 

The great majority of Americans will keep their windows rolled up. Corporations will keep their fine little government regulations and not spend time to actually listen to how you are suffering. While there are indeed many stories of charity to be found, too many Americans hold their money tightly to themselves. They do so because helping the poor means involvement and sacrifice – and in a world in which personal pleasure and enjoyment is the summa bonum of life – well, the poor are just out of luck. My bank account, my next purchase of a 124″ plasma TV with all the frills, my million dollar house, my new Lexus- these are the things that matter.

In other words – too many Americans really don’t care. We simply give the poor the finger and move on with our lives. And as long as our government, our banks, our corporations, and we as a people act like this – you will see the poor begging help on the street corners of our country.

They have no where else to go.