Barack Obama’s biggest accomplishment may turn out to be making that other Nobel Appeasement, er, Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter, look like an effective President. O likes to compare himself to Lincoln (oh, the hubris), but a more apt comparison would be Nero, for O fiddles with the healthcare “crisis” while Afghanistan, an existential crisis, burns.
Strange that US healthcare, which 85% of Americans were quite happy with, thank you, was in such dire straights that we needed to rush through major legislation before members of Congress had even read it and before the American public could be alerted to its draconian provisions.
But when it comes to Afghanistan, upon which, it is no exaggeration to say, hinges America’s security and credibility as the world’s greatest (only?) effective deterrent against terrorism, he is paralyzed with fear and political calculation. Yesterday US forces retreated from an Eastern Afghanistan base after it suffered a devastating attack. The enemy is emboldened while American troops, wondering if their government gives a damn about them or this war, are increasingly demoralized.
Even former Senator, Bob Kerrey, a strong Obama supporter, says of Obama, “he has made too many apologies” and “his strategy is too naïve and has too little coherence to be called a strategy.” (Kerrey goes on to say, “And if I weren’t a supporter, my judgment would be harsher.”)
Our enemies, current and potential (Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadahfi, Kim Jong Il, Putin, Chavez) and our allies are watching to see if we any longer have the will to keep our commitments and oppose tyranny. Upon the answer to that question could well hang the prospects for freedom and self-determination in the coming decades. And time is not on our side.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Revenue Generation
I received an email from my daughter a few days ago. It read:
"Dad, I got a $110.00 ticket this morning driving 34 mph on 8th Avenue- a busy one way street. Apparently the speed limit goes down to 20 mph near Downing because it is a school zone. They were pulling us over 3 at a time with 2 cops working the trap. I had no idea what was going on. When told of my offense, I asked why they don't have a flashing light to alert drivers. As much as the cop explained the ticket away with, "you don't want a little kid splattered across your windshield", if that was truly the concern of the government, wouldn't they install a flashing light? Or does installing a flashing light cut into their profits? Which is really more important?"
My response:
"You might consider fighting it. I got one a few yrs. ago on Mapleton. There was a pre-school in the bldg across Mapleton from the YMCA. The only signal was an orange metal disc on a sign post with the 20mph limit & the hours. I paid my fine, but soon after there appeared a flashing yellow light at that location, leading me to believe that a lot of people fought it and had their tickets dismissed.
More fundamentally speaking, these speed traps are all about funding the police jobs program. Police Depts inevitably have become another gov. jobs program. So they resort to speed traps to pay the policemen. Most people will drive at reasonable speeds, so government ends up spending lots of money to catch a few offenders. Or they set speed limits ridiculously low in order to generate speeding fine revenues. The money would be better spent getting those officers out of their cars and patrolling on foot in high crime areas, where they could prevent some real crimes like rape, robbery, vandalism & murder."
"Dad, I got a $110.00 ticket this morning driving 34 mph on 8th Avenue- a busy one way street. Apparently the speed limit goes down to 20 mph near Downing because it is a school zone. They were pulling us over 3 at a time with 2 cops working the trap. I had no idea what was going on. When told of my offense, I asked why they don't have a flashing light to alert drivers. As much as the cop explained the ticket away with, "you don't want a little kid splattered across your windshield", if that was truly the concern of the government, wouldn't they install a flashing light? Or does installing a flashing light cut into their profits? Which is really more important?"
My response:
"You might consider fighting it. I got one a few yrs. ago on Mapleton. There was a pre-school in the bldg across Mapleton from the YMCA. The only signal was an orange metal disc on a sign post with the 20mph limit & the hours. I paid my fine, but soon after there appeared a flashing yellow light at that location, leading me to believe that a lot of people fought it and had their tickets dismissed.
More fundamentally speaking, these speed traps are all about funding the police jobs program. Police Depts inevitably have become another gov. jobs program. So they resort to speed traps to pay the policemen. Most people will drive at reasonable speeds, so government ends up spending lots of money to catch a few offenders. Or they set speed limits ridiculously low in order to generate speeding fine revenues. The money would be better spent getting those officers out of their cars and patrolling on foot in high crime areas, where they could prevent some real crimes like rape, robbery, vandalism & murder."
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