Seattle wants to declare harassing of the homeless to be a "hate crime":

Harassers who target the homeless could soon be charged with hate crimes under a proposal approved Tuesday by a Seattle City Council committee.

The measure would add the homeless as a class specifically protected under an existing city prohibition against malicious harassment based on gender identity, marital status, political ideology, age and parental status.

The move is largely symbolic.
...
Activists are optimistic that state legislators will consider similar changes to state hate-crime laws, they said at the Public Safety Committee meeting. Under Washington law, county prosecutors can charge malicious harassers with a felony, Carr said.

But city lawyers rarely charge people with malicious harassment, Carr said. If the case is serious enough, they refer it to the county for charges under state law. Otherwise, Seattle lawyers usually pursue regular harassment charges.

I have several comments on this.  First of all, I find it to be rather humorous that the one thing that most people associate with "hate crimes", i.e. harassment based on race, is missing from that list!  If you harass a single person because they're not married... yep... hate crime.  If you call a black person a n*gger, then Seattle must think that's perfectly fine.  I'm sure that state law covers racial hate crimes, but since Seattle itself admits that this is symbolic anyway, wouldn't you want to make sure you capture everyone?

So now that "economic status" is being added as a new class of protection, if a homeless person were to steal my wallet because he hates my wealth, is he guilty of a hate crime too?  Inquiring minds want to know.

The reality here is that people are now so busy making sure that everyone is covered equally under these stupid hate crime laws, that they have become meaningless.  As I've argued time and time again, every crime is a hate crime.  Shooting someone because they're black is just as awful as shooting someone because you wanted their wallet.  A mother's tears are just as painful, no matter why their child was killed.