Woman Gets A House At Barack Obama Rally
Henrietta Hughes was offered a home by Chene Thompson, wife of State Representative Nick Thompson, who heard the homeless woman’s pleas for help to President Obama before a local and national crowd.
The house is in LaBelle, the first home [Chene] Thompson bought after law school. She told Hughes, “Just give me the opportunity to help you.”
Hughes broke down in front of thousands when she told the president that she and her son have been homeless for more than a year. They are living in a pickup truck.
Obama hugged her after she asked her question and said his staff would help. A staffer later gave her a card to the head of the housing authority and she was told he would help her.
Here’s the video, which includes another woman mouthing “I love you Obama” while apparently in some sort of a trance:
Now, I know the impulse is for everyone to be happy that this homeless woman who now has a home has been helped. But has she really been helped? Has anyone bothered to ask why she was homeless? And how she’s going to afford the upkeep on this new home? Not to mention the utilities? Taxes? Payments, if any?
I think this illustrates a basic liberal fallacy (shared by a lot of Republicans too, unfortunately), which is that you can help people by giving them things. Which is totally bogus. That’s exactly the reasoning that lead us into the housing collapse.
Politicians felt that by using government pressure and regulation and subsidy to make homes attainable for those who wouldn’t normally have been able to afford them they’d make better citizens out of those people. Because home owners tend to be responsible, upstanding citizens. But the truth is that owning a home is the result of responsible citizenship. Not the cause. Meaning that if you just give a home to someone who hasn’t earned it you haven’t helped them. You’ve just burdened them with something they didn’t have because they couldn’t afford it.
Unless they’re planning on paying her bills for her in perpetuity (and they might be doing just that) Obama and his liberal buddies did this woman a disservice, not a favor, even if Mrs. Hughes hasn’t realized it yet. Tags: Domestic Issues, Politics
