One time she fell and cracked her head on the pavement. An ambulance ride, and a check in the emergency room revealed a small subdural hematoma.

She hated the idea that she was weak, and could no longer do the basic stuff she never through twice about before — like walk the short distance between the HC parking spot and the entrance to the store. And sometimes, she just REALLY wanted to soldier on and just do it — by herself, with no on there to catch her.

So don’t judge the people who drop someone off and then pull into the HC parking — they could have someone like my mom.

And having found a solution to a problem that was not really a problem, that solution is now gamed by people who only marginally need the solution. Case in point: the morbidly obese shopper who wants to park near the store in order not to have to walk, when walking would very possibly be the best (and most) exercise they would get all day.

People who thus take advantage of a “solution” are the reason others feel they are within their rights to throw coffee and shout.

Imagine, for a second, if the state had decided not to get involved. Some people who would benefit from a close parking space would have to decide whether to park further away and walk, or they would have to shop at a different time. Not an insurmountable problem (with apologies to our hostess, who did not avail herself of the “help” anyway), just forcing us to make a decision. That decision is, “shall I shop at this store now when the parking spaces near the door are full, or come back later? Or maybe shop somewhere else?”

Another possibility is misuse by alternate drivers in households that actually do need the permit. For example, my mother is recovering from a spinal surgery gone horribly wrong and my brothers and I take her to PT or the doctor a few times a week. We almost always drop her at the door and park. She will say “why don’t you use the handicap spots?” and I say “because I’m not handicapped.” Whereas I have watched other abled bodied people do exactly that…drop off the afflicted and then park in the HC spots. At medical establishments, HC spots are almost always full, whereas at most supermarkets, the oceans of HC spots are almost always empty. A sure sign of a broken system.

It comes down to this. A system that was made by the gubmint to help those that need it. And then was allowed to fester and devolve as there was no practical way to manage the system and no practical authority to manage it. And thus the situation we appear to have. Kinda like most everything government gets involved with.

the woman who threw the coffee[-filled] cup [at my car] made the situation very clear.

“Get the f*ck out of the handicapped spot, you loser!” she screamed at me. “You have legs, so use them! I watched you walk in and out of that building and you are a lazy excuse for a human being!…

That made me laugh ruefully.

It’s way too bad that a cop wasn’t around.

And its a damn shame that so many people lack the capacity to know that there are unknowns, such as the true health of someone who at a particular moment appears ambulatory.

GB – I don’t think it’s deliberate on the part of the left – at least, outside of the hardcore Weather Underground types. To me, it just looks like more of their inability to understand human nature or see the obvious consequences of their actions. Destroy, destroy, lie, destroy, lie, hey wait a second how come people don’t trust the establishment now that we run it?