Mommy Dearest

Keeping in step with my previous post, I found one more article for the “Illegal Activity Isn’t So Bad” file.

…A woman in Pennsylvania has been charged with the death of her 11-month-old son after she allegedly slept on top of him following a night of excessive alcohol consumption and marijuana smoking. According to police, she drank 10 beers, two Long Island iced teas, and topped it off with weed. She then went home, slept on top of the baby, and allegedly killed him. The recorded 911 call has her shouting, “My baby’s dead! I slept on my baby!”

…The part of this story that hit me was the comment made by the woman’s defense attorney, public defender Gregory Mousseau. Now, I completely understand that your defense lawyer’s job is to defend you. Comments that they make sometimes make me wonder if it’s defense or support for illegal behavior.

…Mousseau said, “This case is about criminalizing someone who sleeps with their child after they had a few too many drinks.”

…There’s nothing criminal about getting plastered, smoking weed, and then sleeping on your 11-month-old baby—even if the baby had lived? (Notice that Mousseau conveniently left out the weed-smoking part.)

…Maybe it’s time that I became a criminal. I’d have the support from Representative Luis Gutierrez from my previous post and if I found myself in trouble with the cops I’d have Gregory Mousseau taking care of me in court.

…Life is going to be sweet.

References
▪ The Morning Call

Your Papers, Please

When it comes to Congressmen, usually we hear them preach the virtues of abiding by our nation’s laws and then we see them break them. Other times we just find ones who are openly in favor of illegal activity.

…Such is the case of United States Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois. After federal agents charged 22 people for operating a huge fake-ID business in Chicago, Gutierrez was outraged. It turned out that the fake-ID business was catering to illegal immigrants and shutting down an illegal business that provides fraudulent documents was “an outrage and completely excessive,” in Gutierrez’s words.

…He went on to describe the bust by saying: “It only served to frighten and intimidate a vulnerable community and to drive a wedge between law enforcement and immigrants.”

…I’m not in the business of public relations, but if Gutierrez thinks that he’s doing a service to the concept of immigration, he’s doing a crappy job. By suggesting that it’s an either-or situation—in this case you’re either on the side of the law or you’re on the side of illegal behavior—he’s not going to garner too much support for his cause.

…Oh…wait. I almost forgot that it has become more popular to support illegal immigration than it has to support legal immigration. Never mind.

References
▪ USA Today

Saving the Planet — One Asshole at a Time

For the last 40 years or so the pro-choice movement has used the mantra “Keep the government out of my womb” (with the occasional “Keep the government out of my bedroom”). Now the U.S. populace as a whole might have a new mantra on the way: “Keep the government out of my anus.” (I would have used “Keep the government out of my bathroom” but the size of toilets is already regulated to help save water per flush; never mind that you can flush more than once per session.)

…Sheryl Crow wants the government to regulate how much toilet paper you use per bathroom visit, but it’s to help stop global warming, so you should support it. Crow and An Inconvenient Truth co-producer Laurie David are currently on their Stop Global Warming College Tour and Crow writes the following in her tour blog:

I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

…I’m assuming that Crow takes herself seriously (I certainly don’t), so let’s humor her fascist views and ponder how the government could actually control how much toilet paper we use per visit to the porcelain throne. I’ve come up with two possible ways.

…The first way is to have every bathroom all across the country be installed with some kind of contraption that will hold the toilet paper and dispense your one square. Being good global warming soldiers, we’ll have to program each toilet paper distribution contraption to prevent people from going overboard each day in an attempt to hoard it to use all in one sitting. Thus, we’ll have no choice but to make it log when you make your visit to the water closet.

…The second possibility is more intrusive and more expensive. We’d have to form a Department of Toilet Paper Monitoring, which would be a cabinet-level department that would oversee the installation of cameras into each and every bathroom across the nation. Toilet Paper Monitoring Department workers would watch you pee and defecate while watching to make sure that you use no more than your allotted amount.

…I feel as if my IQ has dropped by just discussing this nonsense. The worst part is that Sheryl Crow is probably dead serious about this. No—wait; the worst part is that there are probably other Americans who are now going to push for government regulation of toilet paper use per bathroom visit in an effort to save the planet.

…This is what the global warming movement has become.

Reference
▪ The Washington Post (screenshot)

Wikiprophet

In a recent interview with News24.com, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales predicts that MySpace will fail in a few years and that the popular social networking site “hurts” his eyes.

…The irony is that MySpace profiles probably have a better accuracy rating than Wikipedia entries.

References
▪ Israel News Agency
Joel Leyden provides an overview of falsehoods and libel that have come to make Wales’s site famous: the John Seigenthaler JFK assassination lie; Jimmy Wales’s personal alterations of Alan Dershowitz’s entry whereby he censored information (he used the term “protected”); Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s libel-ridden entry; the infamous Adam Curry podcasting entry; and the error-ridden entry on Harriet Tubman, which was highlighted by racial epithets.
▪ “The Great Failure of Wikipedia”
Jason Scott of Textfiles.com delivered this speech at Notacon 3 in Cleveland last year and covers the Ashida Kim incident, users’ dislike of people who are actually experts on given subjects, and discusses Wikipedia’s consensus-based decisions on who/what is worthy of an entry and who/what isn’t. The audio has been archived at The Internet Archive.
▪ The Village Voice
Rachel Aviv offers an interesting look at Wikipedia in her article “Mondo Wikipedia,” in which she points out that 2005’s biggest contributor was a high school student and entry writers can vie for a “General Awesomeness Barnstar” award.
▪ The Smoking Gun
Professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller filed suit against Wikipedia after a libelous entry was posted. The entry stated that he was a wife beater, child abuser, alcoholic, and drug addict.
▪ USA Today
The most recent celebrity to be hit by the false reporting via Wikipedia was comedian Sinbad, who learned that he was dead. He looks good for a dead guy.
▪ The Telegraph
Last month it was discovered that one of Wikipedia’s editors, who claimed to have been a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was actually a 24-year-old community college drop-out who held no advanced degrees in anything and was said to have edited 20,000 Wikipedia entries. (On his Wikipedia user page, the man states that he has “received an astounding amount of support.” I’m not shocked.)

Dead Man’s Curve

David Brown from The Washington Post reports the following:

Traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in people ages 10 to 24 around the world — a huge, overlooked and largely preventable public health problem, the World Health Organization said yesterday.

In a new report, the organization promoted a long list of suggestions to developing countries, where most of the deaths and disabling injuries occur. The improvements include safer roads and vehicles, better urban planning, helmet laws, prosecution of speeders and drunken drivers, better education of the driving and walking public, and simple interventions such as putting reflective tape on backpacks.

[…]

About 30 percent of all traffic deaths worldwide — roughly 400,000 each year — are of people younger than 25. Although teenage and young-adult drivers are at greatest risk, younger age groups also have high mortality. In 2002, traffic injuries were the third leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 9, behind pneumonia and AIDS. About 46 percent of traffic deaths in sub-Saharan Africa occurred in that age group that year.

…Since 400,000 young people are dying every year by way of automobiles, and since bans on things are said to be the cure for all of humanity’s ills, join me in a grassroots effort to ban automobiles—if not the world over, at least here in the United States.

…Those not supportive of this ban on cars will be accused of not being interested in preventing adolescent deaths.

Reference
▪ The Washington Post

“Be Nice to Psychopaths” Day

It turns out that most people knew of what Cho might do. From the AP via Yahoo!:

BLACKSBURG, Va. — The gunman blamed for the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history had previously been accused of stalking two female students at Virginia Tech and had been taken to a mental health facility in 2005 after an acquaintance worried he might be suicidal, police said Wednesday.

Cho Seung-Hui had concerned one woman enough with his calls and e-mail in 2005 that police were called in, said Police Chief Wendell Flinchum.

[…]

“I had no idea he was capable of this,” [roommate Karan] Grewal said. “We were never told his teachers had concern about him committing suicide and all these dark feelings.

“We were never told that our suitemate was depressed or suicidal.”

Several students and professors described Cho as a sullen loner. Authorities said he left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids. News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly erratic.

Professors and classmates were alarmed by his class writings — pages filled with twisted, violence-drenched writing.

“It was not bad poetry. It was intimidating,” poet Nikki Giovanni, one of his professors, told CNN Wednesday.

“I know we're talking about a youngster, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings,” she said. “There was something mean about this boy. It was the meanness — I’ve taught troubled youngsters and crazy people — it was the meanness that bothered me. It was a really mean streak.”

Giovanni said her students were so unnerved by Cho’s behavior, including taking pictures of them with his cell phone, that some stopped coming to class and she had security check on her room. She eventually had him taken out of her class, saying she would quit if he wasn't removed.

…I’ve figured it out: As a country, we want to ban guns, violent video games, violent movies, and heavy metal, but we’re opposed to keeping easily-identifiable homicidal maniacs off the street.

…That would violate their civil rights, after all.

Reference
▪ Yahoo! News (AP)

Exploitation 101

There isn’t much to say other than it’s disgusting to see how yesterday’s massacre is being exploited for political purposes.

…The gun-control crowd; the anti-heavy metal crowd; the anti-violent movie crowd; the anti-violent video game crowd; the anti-immigration crowd; the America-is-too-rich crowd (the gunman decried “rich kids,” “debauchery,” and “deceitful charlatans” in a note left behind). All the while the media is salivating over the whole thing for ratings.

…This was sick and is getting sicker. Who else is going to exploit this situation? Who else needs to get their personal and political agenda noticed?

Updated Section:

…I have to thank Rosie O’Donnell for providing a wonderful example of my observation. She took to the airwaves on The View this morning to connect yesterday’s mass-murderer to the NRA. She also said that her attempts at promoting gun control have been “futile.”

…Apparently she’s forgetting that her rants on guns lost some of their weight when it was discovered that her bodyguard carried one.

Why?

7:15 a.m.: Two people are murdered in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory.

9:45 a.m.: A shooter executes 32 people and injures over 25 more.

…Two people are murdered at quarter after seven and Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum and university president Charles Steger not only did not have a campus lock-down, but allowed classes to continue on schedule? Steger then has the nerve to say that he’s at a loss for words to understand how it happened?

…It’s terrible enough to know that a madman was willing to take 32 innocent lives and injure almost 30 more. It’s worse to know that it might have been prevented had Steger and Flinchum initiated a lock-down and cancelled classes for the day.

…It might be an institution of higher education, but the people at the top apparently lack intelligence.

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Wallet

Since I outlined a story of apparent political intimidation a few days ago that came to us from the coal regions of eastern Pennsylvania, I felt that it was only proper to offer an update to the story.

…A judge in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, ruled today that a man who challenged two county commissioners in court will have to pay $8,114 to the county to cover legal fees incurred by the commissioners’ attorney. The man originally took the commissioners to court over a disagreement related to a controversial land and building purchase.

…I can’t help but think that this ruling will send a clear message to the folks in this particular county that if you challenge your local politicians, you’re guaranteed to pay for it—literally—in the end.

…What better way is there to keep dissent at a minimum?

References
▪ The Times News

Case Dismissed

Now that the charges have officially been dropped against the wrongfully-accused Duke lacrosse team members, perhaps we can go after the real criminals in the case: the woman who lied about being raped; Mike Nifong, who willingly attempted to destroy as many innocent lives as necessary in an effort to win re-election by ordering that DNA evidence be hidden; and the 88 Duke University professors who helped Nifong’s criminal acts by way of a newspaper advertisement designed to bolster support for the corrupt attorney.

…For an image of the advertisement, click here.

…The following is a list of professors who helped Nifong on campus:

▪ Abe, Stan (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies)
▪ Albers, Benjamin (University Writing Program)
▪ Allison, Anne (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Aravamudan, Srinivas (English)
▪ Baker, Houston (English and AAAS)
▪ Baker, Lee (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Beckwith, Sarah (English)
▪ Berliner, Paul (Music)
▪ Beaule, Christina (University Writing Program)
▪ Blackmore, Connie (AAAS)
▪ Boa, Jessica (Religion & University Writing Program)
▪ Boatwright, Mary T. (Classical Studies)
▪ Boero, Silvia (Romance Studies)
▪ Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (Sociology)
▪ Brim, Matthew (University Writing Program)
▪ Chafe, William (History)
▪ Ching, Leo (Asian & African Languages and Literatures)
▪ Coles, Rom (Political Science)
▪ Cooke, Miriam (Asian & African Languages and Literatures)
▪ Crichlow, Michaeline (AAAS)
▪ Curtis, Kim (Political Science)
▪ Damasceno, Leslie (Romance Studies)
▪ Davidson, Cathy (English)
▪ Deutsch, Sally (History)
▪ Dorfman, Ariel (Literature & Latin American Stds.)
▪ Edwards, Laura (History)
▪ Farred, Grant (Literature)
▪ Fellini, Luciana (Romance Studies)
▪ Fulkerson, Mary McClintock (Divinity School)
▪ Gabara, Esther (Romance Studies)
▪ Gavins, Raymond (History)
▪ Greer, Meg (Romance Studies)
▪ Glymph, Thavolia (History)
▪ Hardt, Michael (Literature)
▪ Harris, Joseph (University Writing Program)
▪ Holloway, Karla (English)
▪ Holsey, Bayo (AAAS)
▪ Hovsepian, Mary (Sociology)
▪ James, Sherman (Public Policy)
▪ Kaplan, Alice (Literature)
▪ Khalsa, Keval Kaur (Dance Program)
▪ Khanna, Ranjana (English)
▪ King, Ashley (Romance Studies)
▪ Koonz, Claudia (History)
▪ Lasch, Peter (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies & Latino/a Studies)
▪ Lee, Dan A. (Math)
▪ Leighten, Pat (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies)
▪ Lentricchia, Frank (Literature)
▪ Light, Caroline (Inst. for Crit. U.S. Stds.)
▪ Litle, Marcy (Comparative Area Studies)
▪ Litzinger, Ralph (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Longino, Michele (Romance Studies)
▪ Lubiano, Wahneema (AAAS and Literature)
▪ Maffitt, Kenneth(History)
▪ Mahn, Jason (University Writing Program)
▪ Makhulu, Anne-Maria (AAAS)
▪ Mason, Lisa (Surgical Unit-2100)
▪ McClain, Paula (Political Science)
▪ Meintjes, Louise (Music)
▪ Mignolo, Walter (Literature and Romance Studies)
▪ Moreiras, Alberto (Romance Studies)
▪ Neal, Mark Anthony (AAAS)
▪ Nelson, Diane (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Olcott, Jolie (History)
▪ Parades, Liliana (Romance Studies)
▪ Payne, Charles (AAAS and History)
▪ Pierce-Baker, Charlotte (Women’s Studies)
▪ Pebles-Wilkins, Wilma
▪ Petters, Arlie (Math)
▪ Plesser, Ronen (Physics)
▪ Radway, Jan (Literature)
▪ Rankin, Tom (Center for Documentary Studies)
▪ Rego, Marcia (University Writing Program)
▪ Reisinger, Deborah S. (Romance Studies)
▪ Rosenberg, Alex (Philosophy)
▪ Rudy, Kathy (Women’s Studies)
▪ Schachter, Marc (English)
▪ Shannon, Laurie (English)
▪ Sigal, Pete (History)
▪ Silverblatt, Irene (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Somerset, Fiona (English)
▪ Stein, Rebecca (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Thorne, Susan (History)
▪ Viego, Antonio (Literature)
▪ Vilaros, Teresa (Romance Studies)
▪ Wald, Priscilla (English)
▪ Wallace, Maurice (English and AAAS)
▪ Wong, David (Philosophy)

…There’s no word yet on whether or not Jesse Jackson is still planning on giving the alleged rape victim the college scholarship that he promised her several months ago.

I Love You; You Hate Me

Over the last few years it has become common to hear the Internet, and more particularly blogs, as being the twenty-first century version of the Wild West. In many cases it has turned into an outlet for rumor, gossip, libel, and even threats of violence.

…A New York Times article on the topic offers three examples of people whose lives have been affected by harassment that ranges from doctored photographs to death threats. One man has had negative comments left on his blog because he wants peace between Israel and the Palestinians. One woman has found herself with a stalker blogger who parodies her writing on another website. Another woman has been sent death threats over a dispute pertaining to the ethics of deleting vile comments from one’s blog.

…In response, conference promoter and publisher Tim O’Reilly joined Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales have joined forces to develop a set of guidelines to help bolster online civility. Some of the rules include situational use of anonymous writing and others include pledging to cite sources for gossip or breaking news. O’Reilly and Wales suggest that bloggers use some kind of logo on their sites to help visitors recognize whether or not they follow the guidelines of civility.

…The concept behind these guidelines is great, but they seem to be ignoring something: If a blogger is honest and ethical from the start, they won’t need to use a superficial logo. This is one of the reasons that I make sure to offer links to sources and, whenever possible, screenshots of links to not only show where I found the information, but what the website looked like at the exact moment of my using it (being that websites have been known to change at the drop of a hat).

…If a blogger is unethical and only interested in libelous gossip, there’s a good chance that they’re also going to be so unethical as to stick a little logo on their site suggesting that they follow guidelines. They’re not going to care about the unethical use of a symbol if they’ve already proven to the world that they don’t care about ruining reputations.

…A second point that needs to be addressed is the bastardization of the terms “censorship” and “First Amendment rights.” It has becoming common to hear people use both so liberally that in many times—such as the cases in the article—both have become as commonly misunderstood as the terms “communist” and “fascist.”

…To put it succinctly, censorship and violating one’s First Amendment rights can only be done by a governmental agency, be it local, state, or federal. A blogger removing a threatening comment from his or her site is not censorship and it’s not violating any First Amendment rights. If it were a governmental body stepping in and telling the blog host (i.e., Blogger, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.) that they must remove a particular comment or blog post as a whole, it’s then censorship.

…Other examples of this misunderstanding (I’d sooner use the term ignorance, but I’m trying to be civil for the sake of the topic at hand) have been Wal-Mart’s choosing to not carry certain genres of music, Mötley Crüe’s imbecilic 2005 lawsuit against NBC, and even an argument that the “ignore” option in Yahoo!’s instant messenger application is a form of censorship.

Always My Right; Always
Let’s look at the Wal-Mart issue first. If Wal-Mart—or any other store, for that matter—doesn’t want to carry a certain band or certain genre, it’s their choice. If I want to open a store that sells CDs (humor me here; I know quite well that CDs are a dying medium), I have every right to pick what I sell. If I don’t want to sell Yanni or John Tesh, it’s not censorship; it’s because I can’t stand Yanni and John Tesh. No matter what I like personally, however, what I sell should ultimately be based on a business decision. If it sells, I should sell it. If I don’t, there’s a good chance that I’ll go out of business. Keeping bread on my table is of the utmost importance. That isn’t violating anyone’s First Amendment rights; it’s me exercising my right to choose.

Shout at the Devil
As for Mötley Crüe, they sued NBC in 2005 after being banned from Saturday Night Live following vocalist Vince Neil’s use of “fuck” on live television. The lawsuit accused NBC of violating the band’s First Amendment rights and hurting record sales, and went so far as to suggest that NBC should be forced to have them on TV.

…If you want to argue that the Federal Communications Commission should be dissolved, I might be tempted to agree with you. That’s a separate issue, however, and the issue in this case was NBC’s right to pick and choose their musical guests. The First Amendment bans governments from silencing private citizens; it doesn’t provide for the right to increased record sales.

…This point seems to have been missed by quite a few people. For instance, the Center for Creative Voices in Media asked, “[H]ow can NBC ban a band from its airwaves for an incident that does not violate any law or FCC rule and for which few if any genuine complaints were filed?” The answer is simple: NBC has just as much freedom to pick and choose what bands are on Saturday Night Live as the Center for Creative Voices in Media has to complain about it. Both choices are being made by non-governmental parties.

ASL PLZ
A third place that has been invaded by the I-really-don’t-know-anything-about-law-but-I-want-people-to-think-that-I-do crowd has been Yahoo!’s instant messenger service and its accompanying chat room program. I don’t chat much anymore due to time constraints, but when I did I recall one evening when one user threatened to sue another user for having violated his First Amendment rights when the first chatter clicked his “ignore” button on the other. (For those who might not know, you can block comments from other individual chatters by pressing a button if they become offensive or annoying.)

…If the incident hadn’t been as amusing as it was, it would have been frightening.

●●●●●

The only way that civility becomes the norm across both the blogosphere and the Internet as a whole is to have each of us adopt a philosophy to promote and utilize civil measures. However, offensiveness and incivility have become historic characteristics of both our country and our species. I have a feeling that both will be with us for as long a time as we’ve had people who don’t understand the basics of the First Amendment.

References
▪ New York Times
▪ Yahoo!
▪ Center for Creative Voices in Media

Boss Tweed Railway

When writing about certain topics, I don’t intentionally set out to find something so much as having it find me. Likewise, I don’t find myself looking for news or issues that emanate from a particular location. While I have, quite a few times, found myself discussing asinine political issues in my home commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it’s not because I’ve set out to do so; it’s because asininity is running rampant here.

…After writing about a potbellied pig story last week, in which a town council and local judge are in denial over the fact that there is another world outside their door, I had no idea that I would find myself commenting on another story from the same county.

…Unfortunately, this story is much more serious than sheltered councilmen and pet pigs. It begins with ludicrous remarks by county commissioners to defend their questionable use of tax money, but ends with what can be called nothing other than intimidation against constituents who question their actions.

All Aboard
The saga began with a rather inconspicuous subject: an abandoned railroad building and the land on which it stood.

…The building, which was recently torn down, was located in a village called Packerton, Carbon County, and was in use until the 1970s. From that time forward, however, the building became victimized by the elements, fell into a state of disrepair, and ultimately turned into an eyesore. The property was for sale for quite a few years, but for one reason or another—it could have been either the price or the possibility of petroleum-based pollution in the soil—no one wanted anything to do with it.

…That is, no one until last year when two of the county’s three commissioners, William O’Gurek and Charles Getz, voted to have the county buy the land, saying that they were going to lure some kind of “high-paying industry” to the area. (No actual industry has ever been named.)

Derailed
The two elected officials, who were opposed by the third commissioner over the land purchase, quickly took the next step in their supposed goal of bringing an industry to the area: razing the railroad building. This is where things got interesting because when it was announced that the building would be ripped down, several people—most of whom didn’t seem to have any interest in the building for the 30 or so years that the property was available for sale—wanted the demolition stopped. They formed an organization called Save Packerton Yards and argued that the building was an historical site. As such, they argued that it should be saved from the wrecking ball, if not restored to its original state.

…That wasn’t the commissioners’ only roadblock, though. It was discovered that O’Gurek and Getz had violated the United States National Historic and Preservation Act by not notifying the state Historical Museum Commission before the demolition was announced. The notification was required because the commissioners applied for and received $675,000 in federal and state tax money to use toward the land purchase. Whether they intentionally tried to hide the razing from the Historic Museum Commission or whether they’re just incompetent hick politicians has never been said, but either way, this is where the story took a brief detour into the Twilight Zone.

…In an apparent effort to fix their standing with the Preservation Act and help their side of the argument, Commissioner Chairman O’Gurek finally filed a report with the Historical Museum Commission, but it wasn’t without oddities. In the letter, O’Gurek said that the railroad building was “being used for booze, drug and sex parties, satanic worshipping and harboring vagrants and vagabonds.” As such, he said, it should be razed as quickly as possible.

…Local police said that they were aware of teenagers using the building as a drinking spot and vagrants living in tents on the edge of the property, but they had no knowledge of the structure being used for drug-fueled sex parties or Satanic rituals. When asked by a reporter for details on how he knew of these activities, O’Gurek wouldn’t comment. Given O’Gurek’s refusal to answer, it’s easy to assume that the commissioner had some kind of insider information on these illegal hedonistic orgies.

…That aside, those opposed to the building’s destruction lost their case in court. The razing was to continue, but not without more controversy. The state Museum Commission asked for at least a delay in the building’s destruction so that they could take a look at the site to make a final decision on the structure’s historical worth. The commission had no legal authority to stop the demolition, though, and the razing continued. Rather conveniently, every staircase to the second floor was removed the day before the Historical Commission representatives had said that they were going to visit the property.

…A third—or fourth or fifth, depending upon how you’re looking at it—brouhaha developed when a second court case arose. Save Packerton Yards accused the commissioners of violating Pennsylvania’s open-meetings law, leading to a lawsuit that was deemed “frivolous” by the majority commissioners. As we’ll come to find out, the commissioners didn’t take kindly to having their actions questioned by any of the county’s residents.

…After the structure was completely torn down, you would have thought that the story would have ended. It would have seemed as if this would be where Commissioners O’Gurek and Getz would have begun luring all the industry that they had previously talked about when defending their decision to purchase otherwise worthless land. Instead, their next move was what appears to be state-sponsored revenge and intimidation.

Caught on the Tracks
Thomas A. Zimmerman IV, who founded Save Packerton Yards, soon found himself being sued by Carbon County—namely O’Gurek and Getz. The commissioners said that opposing them cost $10,405 in legal fees, and that they want Zimmerman to pay for the expenses. The amount was later reduced to $8,114 and the county’s special counsel referred to the challenges against the commissioners as an “abuse of the legal system.”

…As of this writing, the judge in the trial is expected to rule on the case next week.

Next Stop: Ignoranceville
With respect to the initial argument, I would have been hard-pressed to take a side. In one corner we had an organization which claimed that it wanted to save a building from destruction, but none of its members had an interest in saving it throughout the 30 years that it was available for sale. Instead, they allowed it to deteriorate into a decrepit state—a state that, given the photos, wasn’t repairable.

…In the other corner were two commissioners who helped promote the belief that the government is the be-all and end-all of job creation. They helped foster the belief that supply and demand was a conspiracy propagated by evil capitalists, and that if a county government wants to insulate itself from changes in both the national and global economy, it can somehow do so. They basically promoted the idea that market forces shouldn’t play a role in job growth.

…Such an idea would probably be sold easily in rural Pennsylvania because basic economic theories aren’t embraced much here. Having grown up here, it’s quite common to see communities welcome the idea of cutting themselves off from the rest of the world in terms of economic factors. Even though service-sector jobs have replaced traditional blue-collar jobs everywhere else, some communities yearn for the old days. The old days are fun to wax nostalgic, but you can’t put a stop to evolution and progress.

…Maybe these details aren’t a concern for this particular county, though, because their own website provides us with something that is quite telling: Before purchasing this 59-acre tract in the village of Packerton, Carbon County already had 635 acres of available “industrial” land at their Green Acres Industrial Park. If they already have 635 acres that aren’t being used, why buy another 59 with state and federal tax dollars? That’s not to mention that the Packerton land was exposed to pollution for close to 100 years.

…Perhaps the irony here is that O’Gurek was recently quoted as saying, “We don’t want to be a land baron,” after the county took control of several parcels of barren land a few miles from Packerton due to delinquent taxes.

Last Stop: Intimidation Valley
For me, the most frightening part of this story is the recent lawsuit brought by the commissioners against the founder of the organization that opposed them. It reeks of intimidation because Commissioners O’Gurek and Getz have shown the citizens of that county that they’re willing to use litigation against anyone who opposes them. All the while, they can simply justify the lawsuits by saying that they’re trying to recoup legal fees. Again, their questionable moves are done under the guise of working “for the people.”

…I took a look at the financial statistics of Carbon County using data that was compiled by the United States Census Bureau. As of 2003, the median household income in the county was $38,745 and the per capita income as of 1999 was $17,064 (both years being the most recent statistics available).

…Since this county doesn’t have a wealthy population, it’s a safe bet that the people who live there wouldn’t be willing to challenge their elected officials if they knew that they’d face the possibility of shelling out attorney fees when the commissioners take them to court. What better way to keep the people silent? What better way to quell dissent?

…I’m hoping that when the judge rules on this case, it will be against Commissioners O’Gurek and Getz. I don’t say that because I’m supporting their opponents; I have no vested interest in either side. I say it because I don’t want to see yet another situation where small-town politicians get a carte blanche and a green light to do anything that they want.

…If that happens, the people of this particular county might find themselves with a diesel-powered political machine and a set of train tracks being built toward Tammany Hall.

References
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Morning Call
▪ Carbon County Economic Development Office
▪ United States Census Bureau

Reading, Writing, and Hate

A few weeks ago I commented on the NAACP’s push to have a singing performance by former Dukes of Hazzard stars John Schneider and Tom Wopat cancelled because the television show featured a car with a Confederate flag on the roof. Anything with a Confederate flag, the NAACP reasoned, must be promoting a racist agenda.

...In that particular post I sarcastically suggested that the NAACP’s next move should be to push for the destruction of all history books that have images of the Confederate flag so that we can rewrite history and provide a new, kinder and gentler past. After all, the reasoning should be that any history books with images of the Confederate flag could easily be viewed as promoting racism.

...What I didn’t realize was that some schools in England have already got the ball rolling down the road of revisionist history. Their attempts to change the past aren’t based on racism, however; theirs is an attempt to avoid offending Muslim students who might be anti-Semitic and Holocaust deniers.

...The Guardian’s Jeevan Vasagar reports:

Schools have avoided teaching the Holocaust and the Crusades in history lessons because they are concerned about causing offence to Muslim pupils or challenging “charged” versions of history which children have been taught at home, government research has found.

A report for the Department for Education and Skills found that a history department in a northern city had avoided selecting the Holocaust as a GCSE topic for fear of confronting “anti-semitic [sic] sentiment and Holocaust denial” among some Muslim pupils.

Another school decided to teach the Holocaust despite anti-semitic [sic] sentiment among students, but avoided the Crusades as “their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”

The report, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, also revealed that one school was challenged by Christian parents for teachers’ treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A DfES spokesman said: “It’s up to schools to make a judgment on non-compulsory parts of the national curriculum. It is a broad framework and there is scope for schools to make their own decisions.”

Teaching of the Holocaust is expected to become compulsory under the new national curriculum from next year.

...The very notion of pretending that a significant historical occurrence never happened is frightening. Knowing that such a move is being done in a school setting in an effort to appease an extremist segment of the population that chooses to not live in the real world is even worse.

...Simply because many Muslims choose to be propagators of bigotry and ignorance doesn’t change history; it doesn’t mean that millions of innocent Jews weren’t executed from the early-1930s to the mid-1940s in Europe.

...It has become common to hear criticism of the United States’ education system for various reasons, but at least the U.S. system doesn’t cater to an anti-Semitic movement that would make Adolf Hitler proud.

References
▪ The Guardian
▪ BBC News

This Little Piggy Went to Prioritize

James Carville once referred to Pennsylvania as “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.” Having lived in the Keystone State for quite some time, I can relate to that. It has a combination of political corruption à la Boss Tweed, backwards thinking, right-wing Democrats, and a populace that still holds onto the hope that the 1950s—when coal, steel, factories, and other blue-collar industry fueled the commonwealth’s economy—will somehow come back with a vengeance.

...That’s why it wasn’t a surprise to read about an ongoing controversy involving a municipality—or possibly now two—and two potbellied pigs. Yes, you read that correctly: potbellied pigs.

...Over the last year a burned-out coal town in eastern Pennsylvania called Lansford has been giving one of its residents grief over her pet potbellied pigs. The powers-that-be in the area, from councilmen to a local judge, have never heard of potbellied pigs (that’s what happens when you don’t realize that there’s actually a world outside your town’s border), and as such have declared that a pig is a pig is a pig. Citing a 1968 livestock ordinance which prohibits farm animals from living in residential areas, the pigs’ owner was forced to get rid of the little porkers. The pigs are now in a neighboring burned-out coal town, and the council there will most likely wage war against them, too.

...What’s really worrisome is this: Both the town of Lansford and the new town in which the potbellied pigs reside, Nesquehoning, are part of the Panther Valley School District. They’ve been in the news of late because the district, in an effort to make ends meet, has talked about eliminating its home economics teachers, industrial technology teachers, librarians, National Honor Society, and JROTC program. They’ve also recently had their superintendent arrested and charged with driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level of .22. Pennsylvania’s legal limit is .08.

...It appears that the folks in this region should have bigger concerns than little Vietnamese potbellied pigs.

References
▪ The Times News
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Times News

I Am Woman, Hear Me File a Formal Complaint

I’m beginning to think that the National Organization for Women might want to rename themselves to something more appropriate—perhaps something like the National Organization for Emasculation.

...I thought that it was an early April Fool’s Day joke from the Washington Post, but it’s not: NOW wants access to money that is allotted for a program called the Promoting Responsible Fatherhood Initiative, which is designed to build job skills in men and help fathers connect better with their children. The women’s organization is saying that it’s discriminatory to fund such a program, since a program for fathers focuses on men only.

...Post reporter Christopher Lee writes:

NOW and Legal Momentum, another advocacy group, filed complaints yesterday with the Department of Health and Human Services alleging sex discrimination in the initiative that is funding about 100 programs this year.

[…]

“What we’re asking them to do is to make sure that the grantees provide equal services to women and men,” said Kathy Rodgers, president of Legal Momentum. “It should be a parenthood initiative.”

Administration officials and grant recipients say the challenge is misguided. The programs may target men, they say, but helping men become better fathers will benefit women and children, too. Moreover, HHS officials say they have told grant recipients they must open their fatherhood programs to women.

“If a woman says she wants to apply and it’s not happening, we want to know about it,” said Tara Wall, at the Administration for Children and Families, the HHS agency that oversees the grants. “Yes, fathers are the target group, but at the same time allowing equal access is required.”

[…]

One of the grants NOW objects to is a five-year, $2 million-a-year award to the D.C. Department of Human Services. It expects to help as many as 2,500 low-income fathers with parenting skills, substance-abuse prevention and treatment, job training and educational development, said Debra Daniels, a D.C. spokeswoman.

...Shouldn’t a women’s organization be supportive of giving men parenting skills, substance-abuse prevention and treatment, job training, and educational development? Maybe not, since there are more programs in NOW’s crosshairs:

Another group under fire is the Latin American Youth Center in the District, which got a $250,000 annual grant to provide 30 young fathers a year with job training, language classes and parenting skills. But women can enroll, too, said Lori Kaplan, the executive director.

“It doesn’t mean that anywhere along the line our moms are getting excluded,” she said.

...Wouldn’t fathers who act like fathers be beneficial to women? Perhaps only a few people think so. That aside, since Ms. Rodgers of Legal Momentum suggested that this program should be a “parenthood initiative” instead of a “fatherhood initiative,” why isn’t Legal Momentum urging NOW to rename themselves the National Organization for People?

...Having an organization dedicated to one sex doesn’t seem very equal, does it?

Reference
▪ Washington Post

Off-Base Percentage

It’s not often that I have the urge to just find someone else’s commentary and suggest that everyone else read it, but on occasion it has been known to happen. This instance is one of those occasions.

...While perusing ESPN’s baseball homepage, I discovered a link to a piece by Keith Law entitled “Baseball Needs a Backbone Regarding DUIs” that poses a question which needs to be asked: Why are we more offended when a professional athlete tests positive for illegal steroids than we are when a professional athlete is arrested for drunk driving?

...Law’s column stems from the recent DUI arrest of St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, and how many fans have not only dismissed his arrest as a petty incident (one fan was more upset that the police didn’t let La Russa drive home drunk) but have literally applauded him for it (in his first spring training game after the arrest, La Russa received a standing ovation from the crowd). I can promise you that I wouldn’t have been one of the ones standing.

...Law’s column is worth reading, but his points (sadly) don’t shock me. I’m not a psychologist nor a sociologist, but I’m willing to bet that since a higher percentage of the American public at large engage in drunk driving more than engage in steroid use, people aren’t as willing to criticize getting behind the wheel while intoxicated. Their moral high-ground is to sooner go after performance-enhancing drug users while simultaneously looking at someone who can in an instant destroy dozens of lives and say, “Yep. I do that, too.”

Reference
▪ ESPN

The Department of Departmentalism

When the federal government (read: George W. Bush) created the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I—and hopefully a few other people—questioned why such a department needed to be established given that homeland security was something that was supposedly already covered by the Department of Defense, which has been in existence since 1789 (at the time it was called the War Department; it later became the Department of the Army and eventually the Department of Defense). If we’re already paying people to make decisions about defending the borders, and if they can’t do their job, why are we creating an additional department to cover the asses of those who messed up in the first place? Why aren’t we removing the incompetent bureaucrats and replacing them with competent ones (if they actually exist) instead of simply inventing what is essentially a pick-up-their-slack department?

...This is why the establishment of yet another cabinet-level department really shouldn’t be too shocking if its legislation is passed. As such, our nation’s penchant for a wide-reaching government has given us a push for yet another institution: the Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

...The bill (HR 808), which is sponsored by Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich (and yes, that’s the same guy who, along with several other politicians in Washington, is currently pushing to bring back the unconstitutional Fairness Doctrine law), will establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence to set forth the following: (1) hold peace as an organizing principle; (2) endeavor to promote justice and democratic principles to expand human rights; and (3) develop policies that promote national and international conflict prevention, nonviolent intervention, mediation, peaceful resolution of conflict, and structured mediation of conflict.

...I’m guessing that the last point is strictly for structured mediation, since you can’t legislate to have structured conflict. That aside, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re embarking on what might be a twenty-first century approach to life where everything with which we might deal will need a cabinet-level department to oversee it. Allow me to explain.

...Peace is something that we should want without having to be told by a federal institution. It’s something that we should recognize as being more conducive to progress than war. Civility should be quickly identified as being more worthwhile than violence. The concept of being cool, calm, and collected should be adopted by both individuals and organizations sooner than the idea of being agitated warmongers. Therefore, why do we need to bloat the federal government any more than it already is?

...I use the term “bloat” intentionally because it’s obvious that wasting taxpayers’ money is the status quo in Washington. The recent legislation that was passed to set a timetable on pulling our troops out of Iraq had so much Democratic pork in it that the Republican minority was probably thinking, “They’re our people!” It provided $25 million for spinach growers who lost money on the E. coli scare; $120 million to the shrimp industry to compensate for Hurricane Katrina; $238 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program, which wouldn’t be needed in the first place if the government would stop mandating what the price of milk is; and $74 million to pay farmers for peanut storage.

...I’m a huge supporter of peace, but establishing a federal cabinet-level department to promote it sounds like nothing more than a nice way to create more bureaucracy, get a few family members and friends public sector jobs, and spend millions of tax dollars that we, as working people, can’t afford.

...Real peace starts with us, as individuals, who want to find more reasonable solutions than violence. It doesn’t—and can’t—exist in a Washington office where politicians will dole it out via pamphlets, brochures, and public service announcements.

...Moreover, if we’re going to begin a journey down this road of increased government intervention, we might as well prepare ourselves for a regular barrage of department creation. Why not a Department of the Internet, Department of Entertainment and Recreation, or Department of Quality Living? Of course each of these departments sounds silly right now, but we could very easily offer grounds for supporting each of them.

...If we really are to the point where we need a federal agency to “teach” us how to be peaceful, we might as well also create a Department of It’s-the-End-of-American-Civilization-As-We-Know-It.

References
▪ Department of Defense
▪ Library of Congress
▪ Washington Post

Share and Share Alike

It’s becoming too easy to spot instances when both liberals and conservatives oppose tenets that are traditionally attributed to them. The left, who supposedly support free speech, is currently pushing to have the Fairness Doctrine, which is nothing more than legislation to have the government not only regulate but mandate particular speech, brought back in an effort to promote “fairness” on television and radio talk shows. It appears that this morning conservatives have had a bit of a position switch, too.

...A federal judge recently struck down the unconstitutional 1998 Child Online Protection Act (HR 3783), which made it illegal for commercial Website operators to allow children to access information that was deemed “harmful.” The judge explained that parents can do the protecting by utilizing filters and blocking software that wouldn’t restrict the free speech rights of others.

...We see a rather interesting change of ideological stance by way of a quote near the end of the story. We usually hear conservatives say that they parents should be the ones to raise—and educate, in the case of public versus private schools and the topic of vouchers—children, free from government intrusion.

...Oddly enough, government attorney Peter D. Keisler said, “It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government’s addressing the problem at its source.”

...Parents paying attention to their children’s Internet surfing is a burden? I thought that the right-wing view of parenting was that parents should have more power in raising their children than the state. Wasn’t it usually a left-wing view that the government should have more say in parenting than the parents? Isn’t that where the concept of “it takes a village to raise a child” originated?

...These are strange days when conservatives and liberals are borrowing ideological points from each other.

References
▪ Houston Chronicle
▪ Library of Congress

Clipped Wings

St. Louis Cardinals beat reporter Matthew Leach wrote the following:

JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was arrested overnight for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, a misdemeanor in the state of Florida, the Jupiter Police Department said Thursday.

[...]

According to police, La Russa was arrested at approximately midnight ET on Wednesday night/Thursday morning at the intersection of Frederick Small Boulevard and Military Trail in Jupiter. Undercover officers noticed that the manager’s vehicle stopped, but his car was running at the intersection, sitting through two cycles of a traffic light.

When Jupiter police officers approached the vehicle, they saw La Russa “slumped over in the driver's seat” and knocked on the window. After the knocks were not met with a response, a field officer came to the scene.

After further knocking on the window, La Russa responded. He was given standard field sobriety tests, and the officers believed they had probable cause to arrest the manager on suspicion of DUI.

When La Russa was taken to the Palm Beach County Jail, he underwent a breath test and was determined to have a blood alcohol level of .093, higher than Florida's legal limit of .08.

He was booked at Palm Beach County's Main Detention center at 4:07 a.m. ET and held until approximately 8 a.m.

...I’ve been a hardcore Cardinals fan for almost 20 years. All that I can ask is, “How the fuck could you be so stupid?”

Reference
▪ MLB.com

The Right to Remain Afraid

The spirit of Al Capone is still alive and well in Chicago. Unfortunately, nowadays it can be found in the Chicago Police Department instead of the mob.

...CBS 2 Chicago reports the following:

A woman was injured during a frightening attack and it was all caught on tape. The attacker was an off-duty Chicago police officer who has now been charged. CBS 2 Investigator Dave Savini reports.

Shocking surveillance video shows off-duty Chicago police officer Anthony Abbate, 38, a 12-year veteran of the force, brutally beating a female bartender.

[…]

“He was drunk in a bar. She refused to serve him anymore so he went behind the bar and threw her around like a sack of potatoes,” said Attorney Terry Ekl who represents the alleged victim.

...As if that weren’t bad enough, here’s something even scarier:

“The Chicago Police Department made a unilateral decision that they were going to charge him only with a misdemeanor without telling the State's Attorney’s Office,” said Ekl.

But prosecutors took over and filed felony aggravated battery charges.

...Abbate is caught on tape savagely beating a woman and Chicago’s so-called finest view it as nothing more than a misdemeanor? I wish that that were the end of it, but there’s more:

Prosecutors are investigating adding possible obstruction of justice and intimidating a witness charges.

“Another individual came in moments after the attack and attempted to offer the victim money in order for her not to prosecute the defendant,” Navarro said.

The February attack, caught on the Tavern’s surveillance camera, was Abbatte’s second assault of the evening, say prosecutors.

[…]

Abbatte is no stranger to drunken behavior.

He was one of 100 Chicago police officers who had been hired despite having prior drug or alcohol related driving offenses.

Abbate had also been arrested for drag racing and driving on a suspended license.

...The only difference between the Chicago Police Department and common criminals is that one party poses a threat to the public while the other party doesn’t wear badges.

Reference
▪ CBS 2 Chicago

If It's Free, It's for Me

Having been on a work-related blogging hiatus for several months, and having come back to the blogosphere with a new site, I haven’t had the opportunity to vent about the threat of the Fairness Doctrine, which is being spearheaded by Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

...At first, one would think that a law that regulates speech—obviously excluding such things as slander or yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater—would be something that was being pushed by conservative Republicans. After all, over the last few years we’ve had to worry about our free speech rights being raped via the Patriot Act, which would supposedly identify potential terrorists and protect us—at least those of us who are good patriotic Americans—from the evils of…um…well…everything. That’s not to mention the routine attacks on our First Amendment rights from fundamentalist religious organizations, which are “protecting” us from Satanic books, movies, and music by way of trying to ban these blasphemous tools of the devil.

...Sadly, regulating speech has turned into a bipartisan tool.

...For anyone who isn’t aware of what the Fairness Doctrine is, the best description of it has been made by Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute:

The so-called Fairness Doctrine was put in place by the FCC in 1949 to require broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.” After coming under attack by the courts, the FCC discarded the rule in 1987 because, contrary to its purpose, the doctrine failed to encourage the discussion of more controversial issues. Still, regulatory revisionists seem to pretend that the world would be a better place if government officials sat in judgment of “fairness” on the broadcast airwaves and have attempted to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine a few times since it was abolished. By requiring, under threat of potential license revocation, that broadcasters “fairly” represent both sides of a given issue, advocates of the doctrine argue that more opinions will be aired while the editorial content of the station can remain unaltered.

...Imagine having a country where the government requires a television or radio talk show host to say something that he or she might not want to say, simply because it’s “fair.” Imagine how far we could go with a law like that now that we have more outlets for speech than we did in the 1980s when the Fairness Doctrine was suspended. Imagine having a blog on which you want to say something in particular, but you quickly find yourself being told that you have to offer an opposing point of view under the guise of “fairness.”

...You might think that such an assertion is a large jump, but how big a jump is it really? Isn’t it a rather large jump in the first place to go from having a First Amendment that guarantees speech that is free from government regulation to speech that is mandated by the federal government?

...In a 2005 Salon article, New York Representative Louise Slaughter, who has authored the Fairness and Accountability in Media Act to bring back the Fairness Doctrine “with new requirements,” said that a speech-regulating law like this is “for the public benefit.” Really? How much does the public benefit from having the state tell them what to say?

...What’s most disturbing is that this issue of regulated speech isn’t a one-side-only debate. The regulation of free speech has now become bipartisan and has become viewed as an implement to silence the opposition—no matter which side of the aisle the opposition happens to be.

...Many liberals have jumped aboard the bring-back-the-Fairness-Doctrine bandwagon because conservative talk radio might be affected the most. The idea seems to be that if the enemy is affected, then raping the Constitution is well worth it. Essentially, the end justifies the means.

...My question thus becomes this: If liberals, who routinely talk about how much they support free speech, are willing to adopt right-wing tactics and push their own laws that mirror conservative anti-First Amendment actions, who will actually defend free speech? Moreover, how can anyone suggest that there’s actually a difference between the two sides?

...It appears as if liberals and conservatives have more in common than they’d like to admit: Both sides want to force their views on us and both sides are willing to craft laws to do it “legally.”

References
▪ The Cato Institute
▪ Salon

…and Daisy Pushed Back Women’s Rights

They were able to avoid an incompetent police force and corrupt county commissioner, but former Dukes of Hazzard stars John Schneider and Tom Wopat have found themselves handcuffed by an institution bigger than Boss Hogg’s belly: the NAACP.

...After having signed contracts to perform with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Schneider and Wopat were informed that their concerts were cancelled after the NAACP expressed opposition to their performing, citing the use of the Confederate flag on the car that was used in the show, which was named after General Robert E. Lee. A statement from the orchestra said that “the messages conveyed in the program are not consistent with the efforts of the Pops to reach out to all members of [the] community.” Those “messages” weren’t listed, though.

...Edith Thrower, who is president of the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP, explained, “It’s very clear how we feel about the Confederate flag and the long and arduous fight we have conducted to get rid of that symbol of a very unpleasant time in our history.”

...Ben Jones, who played Cooter on the series and eventually became a Democratic representative in Congress after the show ended, has gone on record as calling the move by the orchestra “blacklisting” and “McCarthyism.” He said, “I have fought racism and bigotry my whole life and worked in the civil rights movement, and there is nothing racist about [the show].”

...When I was younger I watched the Dukes of Hazzard on a regular basis and didn’t take from any episode a feeling of racism, bigotry, hate, or negativity in any form. Therefore, I have no choice but view the accusations of racism as being based on nothing more than the fact that the car used in the show had a Confederate flag painted on the roof.

...If this point is to be our litmus test for racism, we could easily say that every history book with photos of Confederate flags is promoting a racist agenda; every Time-Life Civil War book is teeming with hatred and bigotry. Should we push to have them removed and altered as to have all images of the southern battle flag erased from our memories? Should we edit history in an effort to provide a kinder, gentler past?

...Another question that I have is: Is this really what the NAACP has become? Have they gone from the once-mighty organization that helped to champion Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to a group that is spending most of its time fighting against any and all images of the Confederate flag? Would W.E.B. Du Bois be happy about such an evolution?

...I personally think that our country’s two biggest historical black marks have been our treatment of Native Americans and our institution of slavery. Sadly, it seems as if now we have a new problem with which we must deal: people becoming offended at something even if that something isn’t present.

Reference
▪ Kansas City Star

Mush or Die?

Iditarod participant Ramy Brooks has a new way of dealing with his dogs when they become exhausted: beat them.

...MSNBC reports the following:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two-time runner-up Ramy Brooks was disqualified from the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for abusing his dogs.

The 38-year-old Brooks hit each of his 10 dogs with a trail marking lathe, similar to a surveyor’s stake, after two refused to get up and continue running on an ice field, race marshal Mark Nordman told The Associated Press from Nome on Sunday.

[...]

One of Brooks’ dogs died the next day on the trail, between White Mountain and Safety, the last checkpoint before Nome.

...Is there any possibility that we can stick Brooks in a harness, make him run the length of the Iditarod course, and beat him a few times if he doesn’t move fast enough? I’d pay to see that.

...It’ll be interesting to see if Cellular One—not to mention all the other companies—continues to sponsor his Website.

References
▪ MSNBC
▪ RamyBrooks.com

Dude, You Still Don't Want a Dell

Early last year, my brother experienced one of the scams that Dell Computer pulls in order to garner a few more PC purchases. It was a classic bait-and-switch in which they originally told him that he qualified for an interest-free payment plan, but after a few months he received a letter in the mail telling him that after further review—almost like instant replay in a football game—he suddenly didn’t qualify for the interest-free promotion anymore. As such, he had the choice of either paying in installments with an absurd interest rate or he could pay it off at once. He dipped into his checking account and freed himself of Dell’s chains. He also vowed to never purchase anything with the name “Dell” on it again.

...Sadly, now my parents have fallen prey to the incompetence of Dell’s billing department and have received multiple harassing phone calls regarding a bill that was sent after the due date (the check for the bill was sent the day after the bill arrived). They know that it was sent late because of the postmark on the envelope: the postmark is March 12; the due date is March 1. Unfortunately, now two more people have found themselves the victims of a company which—after doing some research on it—looks as if it might have one of the worst customer service records in the field.

...As far back as 2005, BusinessWeek reported that from 2003 to 2004, complaints to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) rose 23 percent for Dell. From 2004 to 2005, complaints rose another five percent.

...I couldn’t count all of them, but Consumeraffairs.com has what looks like over 100 complaints listed, most of which appear to be related to Dell’s customer service. Perhaps Consumeraffairs.com worded it best when they offered:

We’d say Dell offers good equipment at a great price but if you never want to open the lid of your computer and have no patience with troubleshooting by phone, then you should probably by a machine from a local geek-owned computer store. Then, when trouble strikes, you’ll have a place to go where, as they say, when you go there, they’ll have to take you in.

References
▪ BusinessWeek
▪ Consumeraffairs.com (complaints)
▪ Consumeraffairs.com (evaluation of Dell)
▪ Whatsnextblog.com

Under the Sea

Two weeks ago, a group of divers went swimming and picture-taking off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Their photography subjects were a mother humpback whale and her baby, which had been sleeping on the mother’s back. The diver who videotaped the event explained, “[The other divers] were basically right on top of the whale.”

...In response, the baby became frightened and the mother whale duly protected her offspring, resulting in one diver’s broken femur and another diver breaking ribs and being knocked unconscious. The diver with the broken leg is planning on doing it “again in a heartbeat.”

...Some whale experts are concerned about the impact on the whales that increased human contact might have. One study showed that whale-watching boats and divers bothered the whales so much that their food intake dropped by 18 percent.

...We can assume that these divers wouldn’t mind having people stop by their homes for the afternoon to photograph them for a few hours, can’t we? I mean, they’d be supportive of having a camera crew show up to film them in their natural habitat without permission, right?

Reference
▪ ABC News

Viva Book Talk!

Over the last year, the children’s book Discovering Cultures: Cuba has become quite popular in Florida. Unfortunately it’s not because of any awards; it’s because it has become the center of an ongoing dispute with one party crying “Propaganda!” and the other party crying “Censorship!”

...The book first gained popularity last April when some Cubans wanted the book pulled from the shelves of Bossard Elementary School, after they claimed that the book makes Cuban dictator Fidel Castro look much nicer than what his documented tyrannical history has shown.

...A few weeks ago, mother Dalila Rodriguez checked the book out and never returned it, hoping to “protect” other students from the book’s “lies.” Critics have labeled Rodriguez’s action not only theft but censorship; supporters have said that the book is propaganda and doesn’t belong in a school library.

...I haven’t had the opportunity to read Discovering Cultures: Cuba, but the purpose of this post isn’t to defend the theft of library books for any reason. The purpose of this post is to question if those who are ready to all but hang Rodriguez are vehemently opposed to her actions because her move is a form of censorship, or if they’re opposed because they’re angry that someone might question a potentially propagandized book about Fidel Castro.

...I pose such a question because it’s no secret that Castro is embraced by many self-professed progressives, most of whom claim to oppose censorship and any limitations on book access. Moreover, many are in the field of education, where such issues need to be discussed as often as possible.

...What if this book were nothing more than a piece of propaganda that was used to paint a rosy image of a person whose ideological bent is that of the far-right? What if, for instance, a children’s book were published to do nothing but offer a polished image of someone such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld? Would those who want Dalila Rodriguez’s head brought to them on a silver platter be as opposed to a librarian or parent trying to pull a pro-conservative book from the shelves? I won’t answer that with certainty, but I have my gut feelings because I’m not sold on the idea that liberals are as anti-censorship as they claim to be. I’ll get to that in a moment.

...While researching this topic, I found one blogger who wants the police to “throw [Rodriguez’s] sorry ass in jail” for having taken the book (he didn’t say if he wanted all patrons with overdue books to have their sorry asses thrown in jail, too, or just Rodriguez). Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. has vowed to replace Discovering Cultures: Cuba at his own expense whenever someone signs it out and keeps it.

...Would that blogger want a patron who stole a pro-Bush or pro-Cheney to have their “sorry ass” thrown in prison, too? Would Pitts be willing to replace stolen books if they painted a pretty picture of Bush or Cheney?

...My concern is that many people who claim to be adamantly opposed to censorship and book bans are actually more talk than substance. Columnist Nat Hentoff recently pointed out that the American Library Association, which supposedly fights against censorship, has routinely refused to call for the release of imprisoned Cuban librarians who have criticized Fidel Castro—librarians who have been deemed “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.

...Hentoff points out that the ALA has actually gone so far as to refuse to make any mention of the farcical trials which put these librarians in prison in the first place. The judges of these trials ordered that books from Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Orwell be burned. As if that weren’t bad enough, Judith Krug, who is the chief goon at the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, went so far as to say that she “dug in [her] heels” against the supporters of the imprisoned librarians because they have “an agenda” (damn them for wanting to see political prisoners set free). Krug then wished that she could “drown” the entire issue because it “wouldn’t die.” Imagine that: A fight against tyranny not dying.

...My position on book selection is just that: selection. Librarians owe it to their patrons to provide nonfiction books if they’re indeed offering them under the guise of being nonfiction. Otherwise, they should be identified as fiction and offered as such.

...As I’ve said before, I haven’t read Discovering Cultures: Cuba, and as such I can’t call it either propaganda or quality nonfiction. I do, however, long for the day when censorship is a one-way street. Until that day comes, I have a feeling that I’ll have to get used to having people view some censors as fascists and other censors as heroes.

References
▪ Peoria Pundit
▪ Leonard Pitts, Jr.
▪ Nat Hentoff

Higher (Priced) Education

It’s been said that Pennsylvania might have the most corrupt state legislators in the entire union. Sadly, we keep reading more and more stories that only provide evidence for such an accusation.

...It was recently discovered—after numerous attempts to hide the truth—that the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) ripped off taxpayers for at least the last seven years and then attempted to cover it up when news outlets began to question their spending activities.

...For those who don’t know, PHEAA dispenses roughly $500 million a year—all taxpayers’ money—in the forms of grants and subsidies for college students. The PHEAA staff consists of 20 members, 16 of whom just happen to be elected legislators, and they were asked by three news organizations to turn over their expense records under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law. The politicians, most likely aware that they’d have to explain why they were blowing tax dollars on dinners, golf, and spa treatments, refused to turn over the documents. In fact, they tried to sue the news agencies for requesting the information. That’s probably because PHEAA was hiding the following expenses:

• A November 2001 trip to the Meadowood Napa Valley in California: $156,000.
• Two trips to The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia: $185,000.
• Three days at a retreat south of Pittsburgh: $135,000. (For this one, the dinner tab alone was $47,000; the bar tab was over $10,000.)
• Spa visits amounting to $9,542.
• Additional golf outings costing just under $9,000.

...Associated Press writer Martha Raffaele put together an easy-to-use timeline of events. I’ll reprint it here, adding a few comments of my own to it. This should give you a better idea of what kind of politicians we have in Pennsylvania.

◦ July 22, 2005: WTAE-TV requests PHEAA documents showing their travel expenses.
◦ July 31, 2005: The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reports that PHEAAA spent roughly $885,000 since 2000 on trips.
◦ August 1, 2005: The Patriot-News requests expense records related to PHEAA trips from 2000 to 2005.
◦ August 15, 2005: The Associated Press requests expense records for a PHEAA trip in June 2005.
◦ September 6, 2005: PHEAA, realizing that they have a lot to hide, refuses to honor the news agencies’ requests.
◦ September 9, 2005: PHEAA decides to sue WTAE for their attempts at exposing PHEAA’s corruption.
◦ October 4, 2005: The news agencies sue PHEAA to release their spending records.
◦ November 2005: Both sides agree to suspend their lawsuits against each other and take the case before a judge.
◦ April 4, 2006: Both sides testify before retired judge Warren Morgan.
◦ June 7, 2006: PHEAA releases Morgan’s nonbinding recommendation calling for it to release the spending records. PHEAA, however, refuses to honor the actual recommendation and still refuses to make their records public.
◦ June 30, 2006: The news organizations appeal to Commonwealth Court.
◦ November 15, 2006: The Court rules that PHEAA has violated the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law.
◦ December 18, 2006: PHEAA asks the Court to stay the order and files papers for permission to appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.
◦ December 22, 2006: The news agencies file a request with Commonwealth Court to enforce the November 15 ruling.
◦ January 16, 2007: A Commonwealth Court judge denies PHEAA’s request for a stay and orders the immediate release of the documents.
◦ January 26, 2007: PHEAA says that it will release the documents, but doesn’t actually do so after the state Supreme Court grants a request to temporarily stay the Commonwealth Court ruling.
◦ February 21, 2007: The state Supreme Court dismisses PHEAA’s appeals and lifts the stay.
◦ February 28, 2007: PHEAA releases only half of the documents that they were ordered to make public.
◦ March 12, 2007: PHEAA finally abides by the law and releases the remaining documents.

...Who are these crooks that freely spend our hard-earned money? Here’s a list as taken directly from their Website:

• Rep. William F. Adolph, Jr. – Chairman
• Senator Sean Logan – Vice Chairman
• Rep. Ronald I. Buxton
• Senator Jake Corman
• Hon. J. Doyle Corman
• Rep. Craig A. Dally
• Senator Jane M. Earll
• Senator Vincent J. Fumo
• Senator Vincent J. Hughes
• Rep. Sandra J. Major
• Rep. Jennifer L. Mann
• Rep. Joseph F. Markosek
• Senator Michael A. O’Pake
• Hon. Ray Reinard
• Senator James J. Rhoades
• Rep. James R. Roebuck, Jr.
• Rep. Jess M. Stairs
• Senator Robert M. Tomlinson
• Gerald L. Zahorchak (Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Education)

References
▪ Post-Gazette
▪ PHEAA