Some of my Facebook friends posted in outrage over a synagogue in New York City being defaced with graffiti by a guy named “James Polite” (you can’t make this stuff up!). To them this was further proof of Donald Trump’s unfitness for the office of President. The Democrat-for-most-of-his-life and native New Yorker has been generating a tidal wave of Jew-hatred (especially bad because it takes away energy from the more important task of Israel-hatred to which many of these Trump opponents are devoted?) and plainly this graffiti incident was Trump-inspired.
The discussion motivated checking out “After Years in Foster Care, Intern ‘Adopted’ by City Hall Catches a Break” (nytimes, Dec 14, 2017):
In 2008, at a gay pride rally for Mr. Obama, Mr. Polite met Christine C. Quinn, then the City Council speaker.
Ms. Quinn still remembers their introduction on the steps of City Hall. “James was telling me his story,” she recalled recently in an interview. “And I said, ‘Do you have an internship?’ And he said ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well, you do now.’”
He interned with Ms. Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat, for several years, working on initiatives to combat hate crime, sexual assault and domestic violence. He also took part in her re-election campaign in 2009 and returned to help with her unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2013.
He was placed with a foster family in Queens. His mother regained custody of him when he was in the third grade.
But he felt pressure mounting as he neared his 21st birthday, which would mark the end of foster care services, including money for room and board.
Months before that birthday, a Brooklyn couple learned about the possibility of fostering him. The couple, Josh Waletzky and Jenny Levison, said they had wanted to foster an “L.G.B.T.Q. youth” on the brink of aging out of the system.
(in others, the expert on fighting hate crime is now accused of perpetrating one).
The article carries a fun correction:
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incompletely to the type of youth whom Josh Waletzky and Jenny Levison sought to foster. It was an “L.G.B.T.Q. youth” on the brink of aging out of the system, not merely a gay youth.
Based on just this one article, let’s see how many adult New Yorkers were mining the resources of a black gay (or “LGBTQ”) youth:
- the mother (no father is mentioned and, depending on the income of their former sex partner, “single mothers” usually receive either welfare benefits, such as free housing, health care, and food, or child support cash under New York family law)
- bureaucrats in the New York foster care industry
- various foster parents, each of whom would be getting paid (table of rates by state)
- employees of the Children’s Aid non-profit org
- Christine C. Qunn, who got positive political spin from employing this guy
- the final foster parents who snagged the laurels associated with an “LGBTQ youth” only “months” before his 21st birthday.
I’m wondering if this shows a path to boost one’s social standing among Manhattanites. Foster a “child” from a fashionable victim group two days before the child turns 21. Then spin the tale of being a foster parent to an LGBTQ youth or South Sudanese refugee or former child soldier at cocktail parties, neglecting to mention that the foster arangement lasted only two days.
Related:
- “Cost for the government to paint over some graffiti: $52, 953”
- Latin graffiti at our local center for inculcating righteous political thinking (someone wrote “Memento mori” on the ground(!) near the school entrance)
When I first read your headline, I thought you were referring to Basquiat, in which case the answer would be “a lot”.
Here’s a programmer who didn’t benefit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/nyregion/man-found-dead-in-car-new-york.html
Hyperion was acquired by Oracle in 2007, and eventually, Mr. Weglarz was offered a new position in the company, one that he viewed as a lateral move at best, Mr. Biagini said. He left and went to Dell as a senior director of development.
He and his wife divorced. They shared custody of their son. The job at Dell required weekly trips to the company’s headquarters in Texas, which proved a burden, and he left the job in 2011.
His search for the next job was exhausting and fruitless. In 2013, when the PBS program NewsHour visited Connecticut to do a story on older, unemployed Americans, the episode centered on an interview with Mr. Weglarz.
“I’ve applied for 481 jobs,” he said on the show. “None of them have panned out. They think that anybody over a certain age is going to be used up.”
He was nearing the bottom financially. “I’ve gone through my savings. I’ve gone through my 401(k). My unemployment last check is next week. I have about $2,000 to my name, and after that, I don’t know.”