Milestones: Taxpayer, be not proud


From a public safety standpoint, not to mention concern for the well-being of our firefighters and police officers, the situation at Beacon Light is intolerable.

Perhaps you don’t believe in entitlement programs. Maybe you don’t think that your tax dollars should go to paying someone else’s rent. It may be that you think closing Beacon Light and turning the residents out is a step in the right direction, like our good friend Robert Duke. That may be so. But is this the way it should be done?

Consider this: right now, your taxes are going towards someone else’s suffering. I’m almost certain that you don’t want those dollars going towards that.

Most of the people living at Beacon Light are children. If you can rightly call it “living”.

There’s also the whole humanitarian thing, too. You know, compassion for one’s fellow man. All that hippie crap.

Christian charity, if you want to go in that direction.

Basic human decency.

When we allow helpless children to live in squalor, we are demeaned.

(Hey, I thought this guy was supposed to be funny!)

Fine. Here’s a joke:

What do you get when you cross a HUD official with a pig?

Give up?

Nothing. There are some things even a pig won’t do.

Now, back to the tyrade:

This is America, the wealthiest nation is the history of the world. The cost of the computer you’re reading this column on could feed a family in Bangladesh for years. The combined salaries of major league baseball are greater than the gross national product of many African nations.

And in the middle of our town, we have this third-world war zone.

For shame. Shame on HUD for its inertia, for its lack of compassion, for its active hindering of the city’s efforts to help. Kudos to Jerry Moss, Mary Emma Evans, Garry Daeke, Mayor Clem, and others in city government who have tried to help despite the obstacles and the useless red tape.

On this page of Home in Henderson, as on every page, you will find links to our federal representatives. Use them. Perhaps they can be persuaded to take a break from finding new and expensive ways of getting our boys killed in Iraq long enough to lean on HUD to get the people out of Beacon Light and raze this blight on our city.