Uncle has been touting Lemonade freedom. It seems a lot of people who don’t know how to mind their own business have been arresting and/or fining kids for selling lemonade. Glad to see we’ve solved all the big problems.
Category: Politics
Help a Blogger Out
Captain America is up for the Most Valuable Philly Blogger hosted by a local news outlet. Go vote for him in the “Local Affairs” category.
Because it’s certainly not city leaders who want to talk about issues residents who shoot up ambulances or how fire-related deaths and injuries are on the rise since the city has been slashing public safety budgets to keep up the rest of their spending.
Am I The Only One Who Thinks Rick Perry …
… looks a bit like Ronald Reagan? Except I’m hoping Perry is better on the Second Amendment and the deficit than old Ronny was. I first thought that when I saw this picture. I wasn’t prepared, really, to jump in into the Perry camp until Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll.
Government at Work
On the ATF Promotions for Fast and Furious
Bill Clinton Gone Vegan?
Say it ain’t so Bill? But my first thought after seeing that headline, is that he’s probably sleeping with some chick that’s a vegan, and so now he’s a vegan too. PETA is happy now, though:
In December 2010, PETA named Clinton its Person of the Year, estimating that his diet shift spared the lives of 200 animals a year.
I hate to break it to PETA, but I ate those animals instead. Yum.
Plainfield Touts Buyback, Gun Shot Detector
Plainfield, New Jersey is yet another community to install gunshot detectors. I don’t honestly have much of a problem with this technology, as if I have to fire a gun within a city’s limits, I want the police showing up quickly. But does it actually work? I’ve yet to hear these systems revolutionizing police work, and their deployment, as best I can tell, has been pretty limited. New Jersey law enforcement seems to be keen on them, however. My guess is the system probably provides a lot of false positives, and doesn’t buy you much in terms of crime prevention for the cost. Cities would probably do better to spend the money on more police.
UPDATE: Interesting study:
Police response times to technology-generated reports of gunfire were compared to response times to citizen-generated reports both before and during the test period. For the most part, there was little difference between response times to technology-generated reports of gunfire during the test period and response times to citizen-generated reports before the test period. However, the mean response time to citizen-generated reports of gunfire during the test period (about 30 minutes) was about 30 percent less than the mean response time to technology-generated reports (about 45 minutes). Nonetheless, the overall mean response time during the test period (to the technology- and citizen-generated reports combined) was about 41 minutes, just 2 minutes longer than the mean response time before the test period (to citizen-generated reports only). Researchers concluded that using the technology did not change in any substantial way the speed with which the police responded to reports of gunfire.
Also:
There are two possible explanations for this significant increase in police workloads: First, gunshot detection technology may generate some false alerts. Given the design of the evaluation and the relatively early stage of this technology’s development, this first possible explanation could not be explored in more detail. Second, Dallas may have a high rate of unreported gunfire, at least in the Oak Cliff neighborhood; if so, this finding could have significant ramifications for future crime analysis and crime prevention activities that seek to control the random gunfire problem in Dallas.
Given that, it seems to me this technology is a net negative, if it’s not resulting in a better response and is consuming police resources. Yet the conclusion is still relatively positive. But then again, our society likes easy solutions to complex problems, so I guess it’s not surprising.
The Chicago Way
He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.
Correcting the Historical Record
While I remain appalled that Michelle Bachmann is being taken seriously, Clayton Cramer offers a defense of some of her history claims that are worth reading. Watching the media, talking heads, and Bachmann go back and forth is kind of like watching drunk people fight.
Why Bother Being a Republican?
It seems to me that Senate President Joe Scarnati really shouldn’t bother putting an R after his name. I’m no self-proclaimed party purist, but generally members of the GOP fall into at least one of a couple of groups – those who support free markets or those who are socially conservative. Sometimes it’s a mix of both, but usually you find the overwhelming majority of Republicans fall into at least one of those categories.
So I’m really confused by Scarnati’s opposition to privatizing the PLCB, our wine monopoly overlords who like to overcharge and give us shitty selection. His concerns, as far as I’ve seen, really seem to be rooted in the fact that his district is rural and would have even less of a selection than they do now – so the rest of Pennsylvania’s 12.7 million citizens must suffer to make his district happy.
But what really gets me is that his district houses at least one of 45 stores that actually loses money selling booze. During each of the last two years, they’ve lost more than $10,000.
So really, he wants to keep the system so that taxpayers can subsidize his the alcohol consumption of his family & neighbors. That seems to go against both the free market & social conservative ideas that are common in the GOP.
So, Joe, why are you a Republican again?