-By Warner Todd Huston
“Dear homeless, you have been voted off the island.” That is what some Hawaii lawmakers are saying with a plan to allocate state funds to buy one-way tickets off the Island for the state’s homeless population. It is two Democrats sponsoring the program, too.
Now, wait… two Democrats are sponsoring legislation to ship the homeless off the island? Yep. So, doesn’t that break the claim that only the left cares about the homeless. Yep.
It’s all a case of NIMBY, not in my back yard. Oh, these Democrats love the homeless… when they are someone else’s problem.
The “Return To Home” program will give any homeless person a one-way ticket back to the contiguous United States if they can show that someone will take them in.
Lawmakers have funded the program with $100,000 each year for three years. It was created by Democrat state Rep. John Mizuno, the vice speaker of the House of reps.
Interestingly, rep. Mizuno has tried to pass this bill every year for the last three years, but this year, on his fourth try, he got it attached to a budget bill and the measure passed without amendment.
Another hilarious aspect of the bill is that it said that homeless travelers had to have “sufficient personal hygiene” and this provision rankled left-wing homeless advocates who claimed that this was a mean-spirited, negative stereotype.
Rep. Mizuno, however, defends his bill and says that he can “help” 100 homeless people a year. Held as in help rid Hawaii of the homeless, that is.
Passing this law isn’t the only thing that rep. Mizuno has done to rid the island of the homeless, though. Back in 2010 after the failure to pass a bill similar to the current Return To Home bill, Mizuno and and Democrat rep. Rida Cabanilla actually began to solicit private donations to set up a fund that would fulfill the mission of buying one-way tickets for the homeless. They even donated their own money to the effort. Dedication.
Naturally the homeless advocates in Hawaii are not happy with all this business and say it is demeaning and callous.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.