Heros? Bully!

I listened to the noon news with a sigh of resignation as the story about a Dallas cop unfolded. It seems a car rolled through a stop sign in the wee hours of the morning in a rush to get to the hospital. He pulled it over - in the hospital parking lot. The occupants explained they had gotten a call that the woman's mother was near death and they were trying to get to her.

No dice. He refused to let them go, demanding the usual, drivers license, registration, proof of insurance. Flustered, the man had trouble finding everything and finally the woman fled into the hospital, arriving in the nick of time. The man did not.

I don't understand the mentality it takes for these jobs. The man in question was a member of the Dallas Cowboys. Did the officer want to make a score to impress his buddies?

How many of you as a kid wanted to be either a fireman or a policeman? What has happened to them as role models? Well, in Spokane they can get away with egregious behavior and lose little more than their jobs - if that. We just had a case wrap up where a drunken off duty officer chased a young man through a neighborhood ultimately shooting him in the head. He claimed the young man tried to steal his truck.

He was acquitted and will receive back pay. In the infinite wisdom of the judge, the jury was not allowed to be told the young man had already been found not guilty of trying to steal the truck in a previous trial! Fellow officers cheered the outcome. The chief declared she believes in the process.

Then just this morning there was a story about a former firefighter being convicted of assault. This is his second go round. The first, which cost him his job, was having sex with a sixteen year old in the firehouse and taking pictures of the episode to boot. To make matters easier for him detectives had him erase the photos from his cell phone.

The firefighter said the sex was consensual. In the firehouse? With a sixteen year old? I realize that everyone under the age of 60 looks 16 to me, but the offender was around 35 at the time! And married. The prosecuting attorney said he could not file charges because the evidence had been destroyed.

So. What did he do that finally caught up with him? He bought another 16 year old girl bras and asked her to model them in the adult care home run by his wife. He then fondled her, straddled her on a bed while giving her a massage. This time the charges stuck. His wife lost the license for her facility and he must have a psycho sexual evaluation. Do you think?

If soap opera writers ever get stuck for material for story lines they need but search the archives of the local paper for stories galore. This, unfortunately, is just one more in what seems to be a constant parade of deviant behavior.

Police and firemen are supposed to be our hero's! They're supposed to save lives, not ruin them!

As for the attorneys, the judges and the juries? That's another post after I get the distaste from this one out of my mouth!

Newspapers As Non-Profits

Every time I write a post about the print media I lament the fact that it is slowly, or maybe not so slowly, disappearing. I talk of how I'll miss it with my morning coffee. Just today it was announced the Boston Globe has been added to the list.
True, I sit at my computer browsing on line editions every day. It just isn't the same. So when I read that Senator Ben Cardin, D-Md, introduced the Newspaper revitalization Act I took notice.

Why not? Most newspapers are non profit already! That's why they're going under like corpses encased in cement!

The suggestion is that this may be more suitable for small local papers rather than those held by large media conglomerates. The ones vital for communities, like ours, to get the information needed to be well informed. There are a few caveats however. They must have a staff of reporters large enough to cover what the community needs. The dull and boring stuff like city council meetings, regardless of what's on the agenda, and school board meetings, commissioners meetings, etc. All the non-glamorous stuff. And they must do it. Picture pages of social events and pages and pages of legal notices doesn't cut it.

According to Cardin's thinking, this could open the door for a non-profit paper to purchase one held by one of those conglomerates. Imagine the Coeur d'Alene Press being able to buy, say the Spokesman Review! Now that would be something! Yeah, I know, Hagadone owns a chain of papers but I don't think he's in the same league as, say Gannett or even Spokane's Cowles!

As a 501(c)3 they'd be operating for educational purposes similar to public television. That should be a slam dunk. Isn't that what newspapers are for in the first place? Education?

The best part of all is that while they would still be able to cover all things political, including campaigns, they'd be prohibited from giving political endorsements. Locally that would put a crimp in the style of the blogs operating under the newspaper's banner. It would certainly make for an interesting change of pace. Maybe they'd get back to something else a newspaper is supposed to be. Objective.

Intimidation Is Not Justice

When I was a youngster, there were two things I was forbidden to discuss with my friends. My mother's age and my dad's salary. They were no one's business. Nor were they mine for I knew neither.

When I learned New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo threatened to make the names of the AIG bonus recipients public it was one more step too far. His rationale was that the public had a right to know where their tax dollars went. They already do. They went to bonuses. It need go no further. The recipients had no part in determining the bonuses.

He finally thought better of it. Considering the recipients had been instructed to call 911 should they feel at all threatened, to watch out for anyone who might seem suspicious around their place of business or home and to wear nothing that would indicate that they were an employee. Of course there was also the e-mailed suggestion that these recipients "should be executed with piano wire around their necks."

It seems this whole fiasco is surrounded by people who are trying to further their careers, like Mr. Cuomo, or save their careers like Geitner and Bernanke, Dodd and Frank.

This administration and those entwined with it are beginning to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the Bush administration's governing by fear. Bush relieved us of too many of our rights in the name of "security". The Obama administration is using the economic melt down to grab power.

Yes, we are suffering the consequences of bad management and greed but fear mongering to the point of turning us into frothing mobs of hatred is no way to solve the problem.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" no longer rings true. We well should fear those who instill it.

They Want What??

The current climate of the government going after everything and everybody represented by a three piece business suit and matching martini lunch reminds me of Japanese horror films where the monster emerges from murky depths and destroys everything in its path!

The monster in this case is a two headed one - one a Geitner head, the other a Bernanke. If this wasn't so serious it would be funny - just like the old Godzilla movies.

Here we have two men who were a part of the AIG bonus problem from the get go. Here we have two men who have been floundering for months, in way over their heads. Finally they tell us they have a solution. They had to tell us something before the demand for their heads really gets serious.

Buoyed by having come up with something, no one is yet sure exactly what, they've found themselves emboldened. Now they want the power to take over any financial institution they deem in need! They've got to be kidding! We don't even know if the "solution" they've come up with under duress is going to work. How the heck are they going to save others from themselves when they didn't even recognize the perils before them as they sat in on AIG strategy sessions!

The only positive I see in any of this is that they are asking for the power rather than seizing it like the Bushies did in the name of "security". Give them time, however, if Congress doesn't give them the authority they seek, they, too, may just seize it.

As I've said before and often, when the government gains too much power over the private sector, the private sector and we, the people, will lose. Yes, the private sector and we along with them are suffering mightily for mismanagement and greed. Who, however, in government has the slightest idea of how to manage such a business? Chris Dodd? Barney Frank?

Oh, stop. I can't stop laughing. Seriously though, who's next? Hmmm. How about the struggling airline industry? Do we want the government running them? Will they be able to take over, say a GE, because they have a financial branch? How many other large corporations do? Ford. Once they get their foot in the door watch out. They will spin it as a mandate from the people. Populism at its worst.

When those old monster movies were popular I loved watching them. I never dreamed I'd be living in the middle of one. The trouble with living it I'm finding, is those posing as the good guys either aren't or are the most inept hero's ever brought to light!

...But will You Respect Me In The Morning?

There's a line from a morality play that went out of vogue with my youth. However, there is a morality issue here. The question is, what's moral?

When I read that
Judge orders FDA to let 17-year-olds use pill I wondered if Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston would have been spared a lot of grief and heartbreak had it been available to them. When I was young one of the great deterrents to pre-marital sex was the chance of getting pregnant. Those who partook were playing with fire for their reputations would have been ruined. My, how times have changed. Sex between unmarrieds these days is as common as getting up in the morning. Maybe that isn't the best analogy but you get the idea. This no longer seems to be a matter of morality.

Does use of the pill? The pill being referred to is the "Plan B morning after pill". It is available across the counter without prescription for anyone 18 and older. Unless, in some instances, where the pharmacist finds it goes against his or her conscience. Is that morality or travesty?

The good thing about the pill is that the youngster who had sex, thinking or not, has up to three days to potentially prevent a pregnancy. It gives them a chance to consider the consequences of their actions.

My dilemma is knowing how many girls in their teens, even their early teens, are having sex. The opposition to making this pill available to every female, no matter her age, is that it prevents ovulation or fertilization which they feel is equivalent to abortion.

Which is worse; access to the pill or children having babies? Economically the pill makes sense considering how many of those babies become the responsibility of the tax payer. The parents don't have the financial ability to provide for them. Or the father wants no part of the situation and leaves a teen age girl to fend for herself - and the baby.

I look at young Bristol and Levi. They've decided to go their separate ways. There wasn't enough maturity nor love to offset the results of lust. It makes one wonder how long the father will stay involved with the child. Without an education, how long it will be before he can assume a proper degree of financial support?

For all young people who find themselves in this dilemma, it seems it's a shame they are denied a solution to a misstep on the grounds of someone's elses sense of morality. Morality. How the meaning has changed over the years. It used to be a guide as to how to conduct your life. Now it seems to be something to impose upon others.

Morality. Forget about pre-marital sex. How about not having children out of wedlock? Or how about anyone in the business of dispensing medications shall not impose their wills upon those using them? Or - how about making available to any individual who needs it, a life saving solution to a problem? Life saving? Absolutely. The quality of life for the mother, the father and most of all the child who through no fault of it's own is the consequence.

That's morality.