Update: below.
The times, they are a-changin'.
"To reach more potential donors, the charity will offer credit-card machines at about a dozen of its nearly 500 Metroplex locations for the first time this holiday season.
The cashless kettles will be available starting today in Arlington, Plano, Irving, Dallas, Westworth Village and Saginaw, Salvation Army spokesman Pat Patey said.
"More and more people are using credit and debit [cards] for their transactions," Patey said. "We’re just adapting with the times so we have an opportunity to capture those donations from people who would like to give but don’t have any cash."
Better get it while you can before the nanny state legislates charitable giving off the sidewalks. And don't think it can't happen.
In NY, the we-know-better-than-you bureaucrats have ordered churches not to shelter homeless people.
"Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as a link between city officials and shelters, delivered the news to the churches several weeks ago that that they no longer qualify.
As a result, hundreds of people now won't have a place to sleep, he said."
Crickets chirp while they wait for the ACLU to spring into action.
And in Illinois, thanks to unionists and lawyers, the legislature has conspired to not only discourage donations to public facilities, like schools, but to criminalize it.
"So when the Stewardson-Strasburg school district needed a new electric sign, it seemed like good old American ingenuity–not to mention good old American volunteerism and generosity–when members of a local booster club raised some dough, bought a sign, and rounded up some folks to put up the sign free and for nothing. Good going, right? Wrong. At least, wrong if you are a meddlesome state bureaucrat with the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL) and are charged with enforcing the state’s Prevailing Wage Act.
Prevailing Wage what? Yes, that’s right folks, the unions and the duly elected representatives in Illinois have gotten together and promulgated a stupid law that, in essence, makes donating money or labor a crime."
But, hey. No worries. Obama Claus is here.
Or not.
Update: Maryland Mall silences S.A. bell ringers.
