Much has been written, here on Dangerous Intersection and elsewhere, about the corrupting effect that massive amounts of corporate spending and lobbying has on our democracy. And I don't disagree with any of that - I think public financing of elections, or at the least more stringent disclosure laws, would…
On the heels of Tim's Messing with the stoplight thieves, we just received 3 completely contestable parking tickets in one swell foop. Parking officers are local Treasury Agents, not police. Our story is as follows:
Wife finally picks up the car that I just received from my parent's estate. I got the title last week, and insured it yesterday so we could drive it home, get it inspected and licensed. The executor had let the plates expire, and neither he nor we thought to remove them. So she drove it homewards, stopping at a friend's house for a visit. She'd parallel parked in the rain between two other cars on the quiet residential block. When she came out, there were 3 tickets. One for expired plates. One for expired inspection. And a third for parking in a handicapped zone.
Handicapped zone? Then she saw the tiny little blue signs on posts around the car behind her. The trunk of our car apparently occupied the front 2 of the 22 feet they reserve for those private parking zones. The car behind ours, the one actually in the handicapped spot, had plenty of room both in front and in back. She hadn't seen the sign in her blind spot as she parked, but I guess ignorance is no excuse.
I do wonder whether the person who got the city to carve out a private parking spot on the public street still needed it. When my brother broke his leg, he applied for a handicapped hanger. By the time it arrived, his cast was off. But at least the hangers have expiration dates requiring renewal and proof of need. The private parking spot has no expiration. 
The need might well have expired ten years ago. We don't know. But such is the law .
The other two tickets, basically both for not having current inspection or plates, can be fought on the grounds that we hadn't had time to get them. There is a grace period when one buys a car.
Rand Paul, senate hopeful for Kentucky, made a fool of himself with remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and racism and affirmative action et cetera et cetera so on and so forth. If Kentucky votes him into office, they get what they deserve. There was a brief moment when I thought Ron Paul was worthy of some respect—he seemed willing to speak truth to power. I found that I disagreed with him on specifics, but it is useful (and rare) to have someone doing the Emperor’s New Suit schtick. However, anyone who names a child after an ideological demagogue has some serious problems with reality. (To be clear, Rand, under the circumstances, can only refer to Ayn Rand, the patron non-saint of the Libertarian Movement.) Rand’s pronouncements about the rights of business owners to deny service to anyone they see fit is perfectly consistent with Randian philosophy and politics. Basically, it says that the person whose name is on the title owns what the title describes outright and has, by dint of absolute moral dictate, dictatorial command over said property and ought to be allowed to do with it what they wish. Without explanation to anyone and certainly without anyone else’s permission. Sounds good, doesn’t it? I mean, you worked for it, you sweated, earned the means of acquisition, put your name and fortune on the line to own it, worked to make it do what you intended, you should therefore enjoy all rights and privileges in the say of what to do with it. Your home, your rules. There’s a feel-good quid pro quo to it that appeals a basic sense of fairness, suggests a rough equivalence between work and risk and rights. This is fundamental to Ayn Rand’s whole premise, that the creator, the mind behind creation, the one who brings something into existence is the one who has the only natural say in what that thing so created can and will do and who it shall serve. For an avowed atheist, Rand had a very mythic, godlike attitude toward life. And I suppose if you could somehow make the case that a single individual did indeed create something from whole cloth and by virtue of his or her singular efforts sustained it and drove it and made it successful, there might be a good and valid point to this view. But is that ever the case? Rand’s famous tome, Atlas Shrugged, makes the argument that the movers and shakers, the people who Do, are absolutely vital to the world. Nothing would exist without them and if they should withdraw their talent and genius and effort, the world would come to a halt. She makes the case for the Indispensible Man. And in the novel (for those of you who have not read it), a man named John Galt, fed up with the growing People’s Movements around the world, which he sees as essentially parasitic, calls a strike of the truly important people. He convinces the men and women who truly matter to leave the world, retire, disappear, and when they have all left, it seems no one can do what they did, and everything falls apart. The final image shows them emerging from their high-tech hideaway to assume command as the true and rightful aristocracy of ability. It is, in her narrative, a very small group. [More . . . ]
Conservative. Liberal. We act as if we know what these labels mean. Conservatives are traditionalists, fiscally opposed to anything that smacks of gambling, private, often religious, and pedantic on what they consider “appropriate” in either government or personal conduct. Liberals, on the other hand, are often taken for progressive, willing to spend social capital to repair perceived problems, tolerant, agnostic if not atheist, and overly-concerned with a definition of justice that ought to be all-encompassing rather than what they perceive as sinecure for the privileged. Well. Over on Facebook I posted a brief quote (my own) to boil down the actual underlying distinctions. Conservatives are those who don’t like what other people are doing, Liberals are those who don’t like what other people are doing to other people. It was meant to be taken as humorous. But I’m not being entirely flip here. When you look at it, and try to define the common factor in much that passes for conservative posteuring—of any country, any background, anywhere—it always comes down to one group trying to stop another group from Doing Things We Don’t Approve. I heard a news report this morning (on NPR—I unabashedly don’t pay attention to any other news source, I find them all utterly biased) from Pakistan about the university scene there, and one bit caught my attention—at a campus in Punjabi, conservative students who find men and women sitting too close together interfere and move them apart. At a game of Truth or Dare, conservative students pulled participants out and beat them. How does this apply here? Well, here’s a clip from P.Z. Meyers’ Pharyngula to illustrate: Rising Sun School in Maryland has the standard default take-it-for-granted attitude that Christianity is just fine — there’s the usual well-funded and usually teacher-promoted evangelical groups, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes — and when one student tried to form a club for non-religious students…well, you can guess what happened.
The police recently raided this house in Columbia, Missouri. A large group of police officers with nothing better to do stormed into action, kicking down the door to protect the community from a guy who likes to smoke a bit of dope. The most poignant thing we learn is that this evil marijuana-user loved his dog, a point he passionately made after he learned that the storm-trooper cops shot it, and all for what? And keep in mind that this is how the drug police act when they know that there is a video camera running. Make no mistake that these cops were on their best behavior -- this was a sanitized version of a raid. As I've argued many times, it's time to put an end to our pointless and violent "war on drugs." There are many better ways to deal with the urge of some adults to get high using substances other than prescription drugs and alcohol. It's time to just say no to the "war on drugs." I'm fully aware that we need brave police to protect us from violence and to solve crimes that have hurt people. I admire those brave police officers. We need sophisticated law enforcement to storm the ledger books of Wall Street Banks, and we don't have nearly enough of them. But this kind of "police protection" is pointless. It doesn't stop drug use--it only makes drug use violent. This use of police is as pointless as the practice of having traffic cops park behind bushes and waiting to nab people going 38 in a 35. This post is not pro-police or anti-police. It is anti-this type of activity by police.