Bureaucrat fines homeless man for shining shoes without permit

[Chris]

San Francisco bureaucrat scuffs dream of homeless shoe shiner

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.

"I had $573 ready to go," Moore said, who needs $600 for the rent. "This tore that up. But I've been homeless for six years. Another six weeks isn't going to kill me."

The bureaucrat told Moore that she found out about his business after reading about his success in this paper.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/06/04/MNJQ1807UK.DTL

Just another day in Nancy Pelosi's Kingdom.

[NHSparky]

So tell me, enlightened liberals--who needs the money more?

[Baruch Menachem]

I am not fond of sidewalk vendors, and Rules is rules.  But this is the kind of thing anyone has to put up with in order to run a business.   The folks who set the fees and make the rules have no interest in the reality of the lives they destroy by their high fees and insane regulations.   They are just there to enforce the jackassness of the powers that be.

[rich_t]

Government and good sense have very little in common.

[JohnnyReb]

Democrats are all for the little guy.......yeah, right......they don't want him to have anything, own anything, make anything of himself.....as Hillary said "Keep'em on the plantation".....gotta keep the little guy looking to the democrat elite for his very existance.

[Eupher]

I can see the value in requiring this guy to pony up a little bit of money for him to get his "sidewalk vendor license."

After all, he's trying to make a buck in a city that is notorious for its liberal views. Taxing somebody trying to make a buck is the hallmark of that fetid, stinking city.

But bureaucracy does not lend itself well to creative thinking.

The appropriate thing to do would have been to require this man to jump through the hoop and get his license, but charge him only $20 for it. The business about an ID card could have been dealt with also with a little creative energy.

But we're talking SF - city of queers and unthinking bureaucrats who are trying to "teach" Moore a "lesson."

Asshats.

BTW, I'm not seeing that Moore was fined. He was told to pony up the money for his license - nothing more. The OP title is not quite accurate.