Ask-Steve.com

Tough times taking their toll?

We had dinner at one of our favorite spots in town tonight. There’s normally a considerable wait to get in – especially on a Friday night. If we can get in at all. Wait too late and they’ll tell you that they’re booked for the rest of the night.

Not tonight. There were two other couples waiting with us the few minutes before they opened, but in the hour or so we were there the place never filled up. In fact, it didn’t come close.

We enjoyed our meal and a couple drinks. When the check came, I noticed immediately that they had charged me $9.50 or my $6.50 beer. I pointed this out to the waiter and he immediately took the check away and corrected it. When he came back, I gave him cash with almost $20 change due back. A few minutes later he came back and left $9 on the table. After waiting a while, I stepped over to the register and caught his eye. I started to explain and he immediately went to the register and handed me correct change. He’s been there for years and has always been great, so I gave him the same 20 plus percent tip I usually do.

I’ve heard and read many times that tough times put people to the test. That petty crime goes up during recessions and more so during depressions. It seems to be a sad fact that folks who manage to stay honest when times are good are pushed over the edge when the economy tanks.

Of course I give this waiter the benefit of the doubt. Of course I want to think that he was just having an off night. But I’d also be crazy not to feel like I need to check the tab and change a little more closely from now on.

No wonder the GOP is falling apart

Referring to South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint:

The conservative senator, speaking to a group of GOP officials gathered in Myrtle Beach at a conference on the future of the Republican Party, described how the party had strayed from its own "brand," which, according to DeMint, should represent freedom, religious-based values and limited government.

First of all, those brand values are mutually exclusive. Unless the limited government is granting people the freedom to live within the government-enforced, religious-based values.

I'm sure the tens of thousands of recently married couples in California would love for the government to take a more limited role in their personal lives, rather than foisting their religious-based values on them to take away their freedom.

If the GOP wants to return to true conservatism, they should jettison the religious radicals who have hijacked the party and get back to limited government and fiscal conservatism. Their hypocritical holy wars are only going to run the party out of office and into the ground.

GOP senator: McCain betrayed Republican principles  |  CNN Politics

Palin's reverse snobbery and the myth of small-town superiority

Small town life isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, much of the common wisdom around the wholesome nature of life in rural America is just plain wrong.

“Americans disdain snobbery in all its forms except the most popular one: reverse snobbery,” said Steve Chapman [in the Chicago Tribune]. That’s why Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly gets away with implying that small-town and rural Americans are more honest, more hard-working, and generally better than those lazy, lying scoundrels who live in big, bad cities.

My single favorite publication, The Week magazine, has an excerpt from Steve Chapman's article in the Chicago Tribune entitled Palin's small-town snobbery is faulty.

After citing some of Palin's statements indicating that country folk in America are holier than their urban counterparts, Chapman goes on to debunk much of Palin's insulting rhetoric.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don't have to live in one. You wouldn't know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.

Maybe if they ventured beyond the city limits more often, those people would not be so inclined to believe everything they hear about the merits of rustic hamlets, which harbor a full complement of social ills.

Not everyone in rural America gets high on fresh air and the smell of new-mown hay. Illicit drugs are nearly as common out there as they are in cities and suburbs.

Chapman doesn't mention recent findings that urban living tends to be far better for the environment than living in the country, but he does cite some interesting facts:

• country kids were 26 percent more likely to experiment with drugs than middle-schoolers elsewhere
• overall methamphetamine consumption among adults and teens is more than 50 percent higher in the country
• relative to their urban counterparts, rural youth ages 12 to 17 are significantly more likely to report consuming alcohol
• excessive boozing among adults appears to be no less widespread in Mayberry than in Metropolis
• the highest rates of births to unwed mothers are in Mississippi and New Mexico, both of which have high rural populations
• the most urban states, New Jersey and California, do better than the average in out-of-wedlock births

Chapman concludes:

One of these days, the 80 percent of Americans who live in more populated areas may tire of being obliquely insulted. Most urbanites and suburbanites don't think they're any better than their country cousins. But Palin might want to think twice before telling them they're worse.

Of course, we don't need statistics to tell us this at all. Sarah Palin loves to say that (despite being sandwiched between two foreign countries, giving her great international affairs experience) Alaska is a microcosm of the United States. Well, I think hers is a microcosm of the small-town family. And it doesn't take a very close inspection to quickly discover that it's far from perfect.

The myth of small-town superiority | The Week

Palin's small-town snobbery is faulty | Chicago Tribune

Compassionate Conservative: Your daughter's a slut

Ah, good old compassionate conservatism. I just don't understand why the Republican party is going through an all out civil war right now. Why their ranks are so completely demoralized and confused. Why no one gives any credence to their claim to patriarchal family values and hate faith-based initiatives.

This great find by Little Thom over at LTB helps shed some light:

The Modern Republican Party in all its glory:

COLORADO SPRINGS — “In my parents’ day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are,” Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during a GOP legislative caucus meeting in Denver. “There was at least a sense of shame. “There’s no sense of shame today," Liston continued, according to the The Gazette of Colorado Springs. "Society condones it. ... I think it’s wrong. They’re sluts. And I don’t mean just the women. I mean the men, too.”

"There was at least a sense of shame."
Yup, we sure knew how to be ashamed and to vomit that shame into our children in the old days. It's really a shame that we lost that. It's a shame that we don't "send them away" and "shun" them anymore. What the hell happened to us?

I must say, there is that gaping crack in his conservative armour there. Did you catch that? He actually threw in that liberal bit: "...I don’t mean just the women. I mean the men, too." He's done for in the Republican party. What kind of Women's Lib, feminist tripe is he putting out there?

Link: LTB (a Long Tough Blog): Your Daughter's a Slut

Video: Worth a watch

Find lyrics, a larger size version of the video and more at Dipdive.com

Photo traffic cameras cause accidents, infringe on rights

I was driving down SE Belmont St. the other day when I was hit in the face with a flash of light, similar to a camera flash. A second or two later I was flashed again from behind. The menace? A Portland Police van equipped with bright lights on the front and back that flash in the faces of oncoming drivers and then again in the rear view mirror as they're passing. Sounds brilliant, doesn't it? It doesn't take a genius - or even much common sense - to know that's a bad idea and a recipe for disaster. But it sure sounds great if you're a lazy cop who can just sit in a van while the equipment does your work or an official who needs to rake in a bunch of money to hit a revenue target by month end. Not to mention the monolithic government contractor that is making money off every one of these devices they can sell and keep in place - and every ticket that is issued.

The National Motorists Association (NMA) has a section of their site dedicated to traffic ticket cameras. The site includes a page with links to articles from around the country showing that these traffic ticket machines cause accidents. One of the reports if from KATUhere in Portland:

...the number of rear-end accidents have gone up at intersections where red light cameras were installed.

The accidents often happen because people slam on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket, leaving little time for the driver behind them to react.

The city's traffic numbers obtained by KATU News show a 140 percent increase in rear-end crashes at the intersections where red light cameras were installed.

"That's a tough one," said Elliot Eki with AAA of Oregon. "That's a tough call. You know, who's at fault?"

Eki said the data heightens the motor club's concerns that red light cameras are more about generating revenue than making roads safer.

And generating revenue is one thing these cameras do very well.

Sometimes, you realize right away that you have been caught and then comes the really fun part, getting that $237 ticket in the mail.

Rob Burchfield, Traffic Engineer for the City of Portland, told KATU News at the time the article was written: "So far, the evidence we see is that safety is improving."

Burchfield pointed out that there has been a 10 percent drop in red light running citations since the cameras first went in three years ago, from 20,000 in 2002 down to a projected 18,000 this year.

Another major benefit is fewer t-bone accidents, a few of which are actually caught on tape with red light cameras.

There are a lot of other ways to improve safety on the roads that don't have the serious side effect of dramatically increasing traffic accidents. But not only would those cost money to implement, they would eliminate the real reason for the Big Brother cameras: revenue. And I'm invoking Nineteen Eighty-Four here for a reason. From the Portland Police Bureau website:

I received a Photo Radar citation in the mail. How do I go about viewing the photo to see if it was truly me driving?

You may call USPT (the private vendor in charge of the equipment) at 1-800-799-7082 to make an appointment to view the photo. They in turn will notify the Traffic Division by sending copies of all the paperwork including the photo, and you will then meet a Traffic Division Officer at the Traffic Division at the appointed time/date to view the photo...

For a look at what this looks like, here's a sample taken from the Portland Police Bureau website:

Sample Red Light Violation Letter (218 KB PDF)

The huge, red flag for me, though, is the fact that I have to contact a "private vendor in charge of the equipment" so they can "notify the Traffic Division by sending copies of all the paperwork including the photo."

So who is this USPT that is taking and storing these photos of us and our cars, along with our exact location at that exact millisecond? What does USPT even stand for? The Portland Police website has nothing on them, so I did some Google-sleuthing. Turns out USPT stands for U.S. Public Technologies L.L.C. What kind of a name is that? It would be like Powell's being called U.S. Public Reading Matter.

[Editor's Update - 2007.11.13 @ 12:20 PM: Jim was kind enough to point out in a comment below that "Lockheed Martin sold this business several years ago to Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), who have continued the red light enforcement operation under their name," and included a link to a January 2007 WW article entitled, "Red Light District." Thanks for this, Jim! It's pretty pathetic that not only did the Portland Police Bureau fail to update their website to disclose the sale of USPT to Lockheed Martin, but they're still telling the public that USPT is the agency managing these cameras and directing the public to contact USPT - even though this hasn't been the case for years! This revelation and article strengthen my key points. ACS - a publicly-traded Texas company - is capturing and storing this information and has a vested interest not only in selling as many of these cameras as possible, but in facilitating the issue of as many tickets as possible carrying as high a fine as possible because they're compensated for each and every one! And this doesn't nullify the fact that Lockheed Martin did own and manage these cameras for the period between the acquisition of USPT and the transfer of the contract to ACS.]

As of 1998, USPT is a wholly owned part of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Yes, THAT Lockheed Martin. Lockheed's tagline is "We never forget who we're working for." You can bet that ain't you and me.

...the majority of Lockheed Martin's business is with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. federal government agencies. In fact, Lockheed Martin is the largest provider of IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government. The remaining portion of Lockheed Martin's business is comprised of international government and some commercial sales of our products, services and platforms.

Apparently that's working pretty well for them, seeing as how they reported 2006 sales of $39.6 billion, a backlog of $75.9 billion, and free cash flow of $3.8 billion.

I don't know about you, but I don't need one of the largest players in the U.S military industrial complex storing photo evidence of me, my car, my license plate number and my exact coordinates because I was going five miles over the speed limit on an empty road. Especially when, on just one of the hundreds (thousands?) of pages on their website they say things like:

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s technical competency and the analytic capabilities of its systems engineers make it a unique player in the burgeoning new world of net-centric operations, where the rapid use of just the right information can defeat an enemy-terrorist or otherwise-before he can even react.

To address this challenge, vast amounts of information will have to be quickly and accurately scanned on behalf of multiple users in many locations. The goal will be to blunt potentially complex attacks in coordinated ways that also increase the effectiveness of individual weapons and systems. Networked warriors will have a sophisticated understanding of their enemy's goals and will expect to act inside his decision cycles. They will demand prompt answers to tactical and strategic questions of the greatest importance. They will want knowledge-not data that must be interpreted-because they'll have to act immediately.

Sun Tzu's ancient advice is being taken fully to heart: "Know your enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered."

In case you don't think their military mentality carries down to li'l ol' you and me, check out this line from the press release announcing Lockheed's acquisition of USPT (emphasis added):

For the past two years, USPT has been our strategic partner in providing photo enforcement services to a growing number of cities trying to combat aggressive driving.

They're not trying to catch people speeding or improve safety. They're engaged in combat with aggressive drivers, using just the right information to defeat an enemy-terrorist or otherwise-before he can even react.

RESOURCES:

On the Radar Screen
Motorists say that having their photo taken while speeding violates their constitutional rights.
Willamette Week - September 16, 1998

National Motorists Association: Ticket Cameras
A wealth of information about the system and how to fight your ticket

SpeedTrap Exchange
A site sponsored by the National Motorists Association that allows users to list speed traps and learn about others.

Ticket Assassin
Excellent information and references for information on photo ticket cameras; specific to California, but a great deal of relevant information

Portland Police Bureau: Traffic Division: Photo Radar

Portland Police Bureau Traffic Division: Photo Enforcement Program

Wikipedia: Road Safety Camera

 

 

Britney, Paris, Lindsay and... George

It's not like [politicians] have a separate diagnostic manual... The thing is, they spiral into more serious situations because they are often buffered by people who say yes to them. They don't have to face real consequences for their behavior. Ultimately, the profoundly insecure and narcissistic are left with their retinue of [strategists, consultants and hand-picked cabinet members]; their actual, unpaid friends have taken a hike.

Unless an enlightened, responsible person is willing to put him- or herself on the line, the behavior will continue...

Believe it or not, this was not written about George W. Bush and his inner circle of yes-men and women who create the bubble world in which he plays president. But it could have been. It's taken from a Vanity Fair article about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. I took creative license to swap out the text in brackets. See the article for the original text.

Moms Gone Wild  |  Vanity Fair

Christian Science Monitor screws up big time

The Christian Science Monitor is a fine publication - but they got it all wrong in a piece out today entitled, "What YouTube doesn't show." I would have thought CS Monitor above this kind of if-you-can't-beat-em'-smear-em tactic, but I can't say I'm surprised. YouTube is emerging as the remedy to corporate media's complete failure to ask the tough questions and speak for the people - and that is bound to rattle some cages. Especially when it starts putting a dent in the power and pocketbooks of the 800 pound gorillas kicking back in those cages.

The subtitle of the piece reads:

YouTube spread news of Florida's Taser incident fast. But instant media doesn't always tell the whole story.

That's rich. As though Fox, USA Today or any other corporate media outlet always tells the whole story. That's such a laughably flawed statement that I'm surprised it made it past the editor. Instant media (which every news outlet on the planet seems to be trying to emulate in terms of speed these days) doesn't try or intend to tell the whole story. They're video clips for crying out loud! Unlike the mainstream media outlets that often do claim to be telling the whole story - and in an unbiased way at that. It's an absurd comparison.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are conveyed by a video tape? Whatever the number, it is not always enough to understand the situation.

So we're to be prevailed upon to believe that YouTube, with its virtually unlimited capacity for the number of videos it can hold and much less constrained length of those videos - uploaded mostly by average folks like you and me at the scene - are going to provide a less complete picture of things compared to broadcast media? How many amateur videos of that University of Florida incident are there? If only we'd had a Fox News camera crew there we'd know God's own truth of exactly what happened there that fateful day!

That will not stop many people from rushing to judgment based on what they think they know.

Sage words, Mr. Jett. Good thing you're above ever doing anything like that and, say, publishing it in the Christian Science Monitor. If only people would rush to judgment based on what they think they don't know. Or crawl slowly toward judgment based on what they do know, but don't realize they know. Now that would be ideal. At exactly what point did you deem it appropriate to form the opinions you're expressing here? And exactly how much information did you feel you had to accumulate and process before what you thought you knew became what you truly know - in your estimation?

Their views are formed more by the media stampede and their own biases than by what really happened. And that says a lot about how people react and how information is used today.

And this phenomenon of the human race is suddenly unique to YouTube how? This has no doubt been the case since the first prehistoric news hack painted his first big story on a cave wall during the Upper Paleolithic. I don't know how you manage to be a first-hand witness to all events that you form an opinion about, but folks like me are constrained by our physical bodies and things called time and space. Therefore we glean what we can from what we have determined to be reliable sources and then form our opinions based on that.

As the story spread, many people formed a firmly held opinion.

Damn those pesky many people! How dare they form an opinion - let alone a firmly held one! - as the story is still spreading!

I also had an opinion on the event...

You don't say?

...but my perspective was unique.

Well of course it was! Do you really think any of us lowly many people would think that our rushed, firmly-held opinions could possibly have been formed on as solid a basis as your omniscient, omnipresent perspective would allow? Perish the thought!

I was the moderator of Sen. Kerry's talk and the only other person on stage with him.

Oh, sweet! I'm glad I kept reading! So the key is that simple. I'll just be sure to land a stage role at the heart of every world event so that I don't have to rely on spurious media coverage and eyewitness accounts. Especially accounts caught on video tape. I'd rather have someone interpret for me what happened than be forced to rely on live video footage. Who knows what kind of judgments I might make if I actually saw what happened myself?

Take the case of Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student who had a Taser used against him by campus police at a speech by Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts last month. Videotapes of the incident made the evening television news and immediately found their way onto YouTube.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was called in to investigate whether the actions of the officers were appropriate. Their 300-page report was recently turned over to university officials. (A summary of it is at www.president.ufl.edu/incident/.) The report concluded the officers acted "well within" their guidelines and also pointed out that the student had provoked an earlier disturbance on campus.

Wow - what complete idiots all we gullible many people have been! Why didn't we wait until the completely unbiased, 300-page report came to us via university officials from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement rather than rush to judgment based on eyewitness accounts and multiple video clips of what happened? So that kid wasn't actually being knocked down, sat on and roughed up by four cops and Tased repeatedly while screaming and pleading for mercy and help. Obviously those video clips and all those eyewitnesses must have gotten it wrong somehow. No seriously! The report says so!

The really great part?

In a letter released October 29, Mr. Meyer publicly apologized for his "failure to act calmly" during the speech and admitted he had "stepped out of line" and was truly sorry for tarnishing the university's image.

That doesn't begin to portray the tone and content of Meyer's letter. It was an abject, groveling plea for mercy. I wasn't halfway through it when I couldn't have been persuaded to believe other than that this kid was blackmailed into writing this letter. Why should the authorities deal with repeat offenders when you can make an example of a kid like this, have your thugs beat the shit out of him, threaten him with who knows what afterward, get him to write a prostrate mea culpa - and then get the Christian Science Monitor to put out a piece like Mr. Jett's here. It's a complete coup for the Cheney/Rove/Bush/Kristol regime and their fear-mongering tactics of frightening U.S. citizens - especially those who might dare to engage their brains, ethics or morals - into self-censorship and trembling complicity in its tyranny.

I almost wonder if John P. Philbin didn't coach Karl Rove on writing this piece with the help of Bill Kristol.

****************

What YouTube doesn't show  |  Christian Science Monitor

In like a lion, out like a liberal

I can't blame the kid who got tortured by campus cops in Florida for caving in to fear or discomfort or whatever it was that caused him to abandon his zeal for truth and free speech. Why be a lonely martyr for an ambiguous and disorganized movement? Or worse, lack of movement within an ill-defined, amorphous majority called "the Left?" Those are no doubt the kinds of questions Irving Kristol was asking himself around the mid-1940's as he continued his dramatic and historically catastrophic slide from the far Left to the far Right, eventually devising and founding the tyrannical political movement now known as neoconservatism. If Karl Rove is The Architect of the Bush regime and it's disastrous policies and actions, Irving Kristol is The Creator. But, as usual, I digress...

Salon.com has an AP story today entitled, Tasered Student Avoids Criminal Charges.

Oct 30th, 2007 | ORLANDO, Fla. -- A University of Florida student who was shocked with a Taser after persistently questioning Sen. John Kerry will avoid criminal charges by apologizing and complying with terms of a voluntary 18-month probation, authorities said Tuesday.

Let's strip that sentence naked: A college student in Florida will avoid criminal charges after being shocked [repeatedly, we know] for persistently questioning a visiting politician. He'll avoid criminal charges by complying with terms of an 18-month probation.

I sure as hell hope that seems as ludicrous and outrageous to you as it does to me. The kid is going to avoid being criminalized, harassed and having his life further disrupted by kissing the ass of the very thugs who beat and tortured him for asking tough questions of a U.S. politician.

...In letters to the university, its president and the campus police department, he apologized, attorney Robert Griscti said.

"I made the decision to supersede the rules, and for that I apologize," Meyer wrote. "I should have acted calmer and obeyed the directives of the officers. If I had, none of the subsequent issues would ever have arisen."

State Attorney William Cervone said Meyer agreed to conduct himself "in a fashion that demonstrates his ability to behave appropriately and without violating the law" during 18 months of probation.

"If he is successful in doing so, the case against him will be closed without formal court action," Cervone said in a statement.

In other words, he thought that he lived in an America where citizens still have rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He was wrong. That would be pre-Cheney/Rove/Bush America. And he has clearly woken up to the error in his thinking. He knows now he has to line up with everyone else and buy protection from these thugs with silence and abject cooperation. The pangs of moral conscience will fade in time and rationalization and complacence will put him first in a state of fearful resignation and, eventually, comfortable denial and ignorance. In fact, it looks like he's already well on his way:

"I'm so sorry that I lost my control in that auditorium," he wrote. "I went there to ask an important question. The question of voter disenfranchisement in America cuts to the heart of our democracy, and my failure to act calmly resulted in this important town forum ending without the discourse intended. For that, I am truly sorry..."

"I am a far more reasoned individual than I was a short while ago, and the reasoned response of the university has helped me a great deal," Meyer wrote.

See? Isn't that much easier? Much more comfortable? Much less scary?

So, copper top: What's the blue pill taste like?

A smile amidst the chaos of flooding in England

I love this photo, found on the top page of NPR.com this morning.

Photo: Matt Cardy

A milkman delivers milk to a flooded home Monday in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England. Flooding has caused widespread disruption across the country, with further regions braced for more floods.
Getty Images

Quoted from: NPR : Much of England Under Water After Heavy Rains