Well, we’re not really sorry.
If they were really sorry maybe they’d stop doing it.
Two stories, both on page 3 of today’s Asbury Park Press seem unrelated but have a common thread. Bob Ingle’s column (not yet available on-line) discusses the effort by the great New Jersey State Senator Michael Doherty to ban the use of red-light cameras in the state. Ingle points to many of the problems that I have detailed on these pages but also hits on one I missed completely: Drivers, when stopped at a red light that has a camera, will no longer move over the stop line to let an ambulance through. For them, it’s just not worth the hassle of having to fight the ticket that will inevitable arrive. Precious minutes are now lost because the government thinks it’s cameras are making us safer (and them richer). The consequences can be, and probably already have been, deadly for some emergency patients.
Related to this story, at least in my mind, is an item in the “Capital Quickies” column. Titled “Overdose bill stalled in N.J.”, it, too, is unavailable on-line. The story describes the so-far fruitless efforts by Patty DiRenzo, the mother of an overdose victim, to get the government to give immunity from prosecution to people who call 911 to report a companion’s overdose. As it stands now, the police arrest everyone at the scene, so nobody calls for help. This is one of the many ways that the government’s war on drugs kills people.
Ms. DiRenzo’s idea seems like a no-brainer, and therefore lies the problem. Brainpower and government in this state appear to be mutually exclusive terms.
What Goes Around Comes Around.
From today’s Asbury Park Press story about the sentencing of Dharun Ravi:
Communities that once fought for bias intimidation laws now are questioning their application in this case,…….
And:
Ravi’s mother, Sabitha, spoke at the rally, as did Pradip “Pete” Kothari, who said he was among those in New Jersey who originally pushed for the bias intimidation statute in the wake of a fatal beating in 1987 of an Indian man in Hoboken.
“The very law the members of our community have asked for in the past has been put against somebody wrongfully to ruin his life and his family’s life,” Kothari said. “They should not have tried Dharun Ravi for hate crimes. That was a wrong judgment by the prosecutor.”
At least one gay-rights activist gets it:
Members of the gay community, likewise, are unhappy with how the bias intimidation laws are being applied here. Bill Dobbs, a New York-based gay activist and civil libertarian who attended the Ravi trial and rally, said the bias intimidation laws are unnecessary and have the potential to cause backlash.
From today’s Asbury Park Press story about the proposed skuttling of the age restriction on renting back houses:
But some Belmar residents are concerned about the impact the proposed change could have on the borough’s population. Opening up more units in the built-out borough to year-round residents could increase the number of students in local public schools, leading to an increase in property taxes, resident Anne Condon said.
With all the hand wringing over J.P. Morgan’s trading loss, and the calls by the planners for more regulations to make sure it never happens again, isn’t anyone considering that some other company or companies made $2 billion? Isn’t that a good thing? Think of all the taxes they will have to pay on that $2 billion. Why should the government make it it’s business which company made the $2 billion and which company lost it?
From the Daily Mail:
President Barack Obama has $500,001 to $1 million in a JPMorgan Chase private client asset management checking account, according to financial disclosures released by the White House on Tuesday.
Mr Obama said this week that JPMorgan was ‘one of the best managed banks there is’ despite its $2 billion trading loss being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission………..
Oh.
Well, me actually. Read it in The Patch.
Audrey: excellent article………………………………………..
David Peck: Excellent work. It is truly refreshing…………
Mattie: Sounds like a plan to me, Dave. 
………………….
“Babies, to us, had become what locusts were to farmers.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
One of the most depressing consequences of socializing the cost of child rearing in our towns, especially for people who like kids, is that young families are discouraged from moving in unless they can afford to buy a single family house and thus pay very high taxes.
If you attend any public hearing about residential development plans you’ll invariably hear people, even many who are parents of school-aged children themselves, warn that it might attract people with children and that the schools and other youth services are already being overused and that our taxes will go up. It is very difficult, maybe impossible, to get approval for any multi unit housing with units big enough to have more than one child in. Since when did young families become the “wrong” kind of people?
When people vote to make their children a financial burden to their neighbors it causes a lot of divisiveness. We are seeing this right now over Belmar’s proposal to allow non senior citizens to rent back houses. The cost of services for the potential increased number of children in town is one of the objections we are hearing to the plan.
If everyone just paid for their own kids’ stuff we wouldn’t see any opposition to more children coming to town. Remember that the government can not do all these things for the kids without first taking the money that’s needed for it from us. But if they didn’t take the money from us we could just do it ourselves if we thought it was worthwhile. And without filtering the money through the government, it could be done at much lower cost. This is especially true about the schools, which have completely insulated themselves from even the slightest hint of market forces.
It just makes no sense for our leaders to on one hand advocate for more child services from the government on one hand, yet on the other hand act to discourage people with children from moving to town. It makes no sense unless you consider that only parents who already live here can vote.
I don’t ask my neighbors to subsidize my grocery bills (and they should be very grateful for that!) so I don’t see why I should ask them to subsidize the cost of raising my children either.
This sign serves no purpose other than to tell you that the sign is required to be there.
Note that you should not call the number about anything that actually matters.
From The Newspaper:
In Chicago, Illinois the city council on Wednesday voted 34-14 to implement Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposal to create the nation’s largest speed camera program. Owners of vehicles accused by a machine of driving a few miles per hour over the speed limit will be billed up to $100. Redflex Traffic Systems, the Australian firm that runs the existing red light camera program, has the inside track on landing the lucrative photo radar contract. As reported by TheNewspaper last year, Gregory Goldner, Emanuel’s campaign manager, runs the “Traffic Safety Coalition” front group for Redflex. Goldner’s public relations firm specializes in creating the appearance of grassroots support for unpopular legislation.