Congratulations to the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida for winning this week’s Idiot of the Week poll! City governments making our list are becoming a trend it seems, and this time Fort Lauderdale wins for arresting two ministers and a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless. Arnold Abbott and the ministers were taken into custody for violating a city ordinance that limits outdoor feeding sites. The law also creates a maze of procedures to navigate in order to provide food at all. The city should know better. Abbott fought a similar law back in 1999 which prohibited feeding the homeless on the beach, and he won. Somebody in Fort Lauderdale needs a course in how to manage public opinion. Perhaps slapping 90-year-old men in handcuffs isn’t the way.
And here’s the reminder of who Fort Lauderdale was up against this time:
Sylvia Mashiah: Sylvia “Wrong Way” Mashiah had 27 pounds of methamphetamine stowed away in the rear panels of her car. When she was waved through the customs checkpoint, she thought she was home free! But she took a wrong turn and ended up in the parking lot where the secondary searches of suspicious vehicles takes place, and agents found the drugs. She’ll have a minimum five years in prison to learn her right from her left.
Heather Cagle: Stuffing kids in car trunks seems to be a thing now. Cagle, an Oklahoma teacher, decided she needed to make a Wal-Mart run. She knew leaving her kids in the classroom unsupervised was probably a bad idea, so she piled them all in the car. Two wouldn’t fit, so she put them in the trunk. We understand. Sometimes those everyday low prices on snacks are just too good to pass up.
Epila Cosmetics: A Turkish cosmetics company needed a photo of a hairy guy to market its line of hair removal products. It found one online and slapped it in an advertisement that hit the papers across Turkey. Somehow they missed the fact it was a post-capture photo of al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Whether the company is truly ignorant or just made a bad marketing move, Epila makes it to our nominees this week!
