I find it unsettling that you find her behavior acceptable. I flatly refuse to be threated by anyone for any reason. I find it even less acceptable when the only thing I have done is to tell you that I don't have any cash on me.

How about this for a scenario? I'll show up at your house and demand your cash. When you don't give me any, I'll just tell you that I'll be back to steal your TV and your stereo. That make you mad? Well, I don't like being hassled either.

I used to buy in to the whole propaganda that we, the working tax payers, just needed to throw more money at the problem it would go away.

Then one week, I was driving to work on my usual route and I noticed that while the children and sign stayed the same, the woman presenting herself as their mother rotated daily. Concerned that the children were not in school, I called the aforementioned social services. It seems that these gals (all 6 of them) had pooled their children (4 kids - 11, 9, 7, and 5) and were taking turns panhandling at a busy intersection all day because they were brining in about $1000 day. Nevermind that 1) the children are learning that you beg for money and 2) not getting any kind of an education to prepare them to have a real working life.

My eyes were further opened when a friend of mine, who is a police captain in a suburb here, took me around to show me his local pandhandlers. One of them, finished with his hard day of mooching, heads off down an alley and drives off in a brand new Chevy Surburban. Another was presented with a sack of groceries which he promptly dumped in the trash. This man's sign stated that he needed to buy food for his family. When my friend asked him why he threw the food away without even looking in the back, he said, "I''m here for the cash. If they *gestures at people driving past* see the sack of groceries, they won't give me any more money." The third one was spotted in bank parking lot totaling up his take for the day on a new laptop, sitting on the hood of his Honda Accord.

I'm told that this is pretty typical for many of the people who you see on the street corners with their cardboard signs. I've not seen any reason to doubt it.