Ok, got through about ten minutes of Ju-On.
But I digress. There’s much more scary things going on. For one, there’s about a dozen convicted sex offenders within a couple miles of my house. Quite a few of them are convicted for sex with a minor. Right about here is where my reluctance to press for the death penalty rapidly dwindles away. Case in point. Sometimes the tragedy is too much to bear. This guy certainly ought not to have been granted the least bit of leniency, or, more to the point, liberty. I mean, the garden-variety wackos are more than enough. There’s been a recent spate of such activity, and there’s some fallout from one of those episodes: John Couey, who abducted and murdered Jessica Lunsford last month, will certainly be prosecuted. However, there’s some evidence for that others were involved in harboring him and obstructing law enforcement, and apparently the State Attorney appointed by Jeb Bush is declining to bring them in on charges. I began writing this (the first five or so sentences in this paragraph) last night, and I happened to have the radio tuned to the Pat Campbell show this morning on the way into work; the subject matter grabbed me. Pat had a fellow named Jack Thompson on and Mr. Thompson has written to Jeb Bush demanding that Jeb replace Brad King, the State Attorney handling the case, with someone more predisposed to doing their job. It seems that practically all three (?) occupants of this mobile home Couey was hiding out in (this is where he lived when he abducted and killed Jessica) can be charged with varying misdemeanors. And from what I’ve heard, there’s little doubt that they lied to the police when they were attempting to find Couey. Anyway, details here. This is not an endorsement of Pat Campbell; I agree with him on some issues and disagree with him on many others. I did like his pre-election coverage of the ballot measures, and so I occasionally give him a listen. I’m curious to know what others are thinking about this.
On top of the recent murders, there’s been two incidences of sexual molestation lately, both targeted disabled children. Needless to say, this is of more than minor concern to me. I feel a strong need for more of a disincentive to cover up this sort of thing (one of these did involve an attempt to sweep it under the rug on the part of the principal) than firing those involved in the coverup. There may be local laws that were violated; it seems I recall a case in the last couple of years where some school officers were charged with crimes for covering up a similar incident. This sort of thing just makes my blood boil, to the extent that I’m not even going to attempt any sort of rational discussion. Consider this an open thread for doing so; maybe after I calm down I can be more objective. I just think that if something like this happened to Emily I would be looking to hurt someone. Not saying I would, just that the need to do so might be very powerful.
A couple of days ago I spoke a little on government power. Today’s post is to point out a couple of instances close to home where that power, and the trust implicit in granting that power, has failed. I’m sure everyone recalls well the hurricanes that ravaged parts of Florida late last summer. Well, FEMA to the rescue! Sort of. I guess this is the sort of thing that can happen when there’s no goals and no accountability; the government winds up investigating itself. I’ve spoken to more than a few people that dealt with FEMA after the hurricanes, and their experiences range from what you’d want to see from a body entrusted with huge amounts of other people’s tax dollars, to a sort of Pythonesque "nudge nudge, wink wink" inquiry. Are you sure you haven’t purchased a generator? So, given that FEMA paid for the funerals of hundreds who weren’t actually killed (or even wounded) by the hurricanes, and given that FEMA also dished out millions in hurricane relief to MIAMI, for crying out loud (IIRC Miami didn’t see winds exceeding 35 mph), something beyond the current way of doing business is needed.
But FEMA and the local governments did accomplish good things. If you’d followed happenings here, you’d know that there was a small matter of a couple of million cubic yards of yard debris to dispose of. A goodly chunk of that was processed in an empty field about a mile south of here; that field was just cleaned of its last few truckloads a couple of weeks ago. To really appreciate just how much brush that is, consider that it took months of dusk-to-dawn shredding with a jumbo-sized shredder (the kind that you can dump chunks of full-sized tree trunks into) to get it all processed. And of course that much wood didn’t fall down without taking roofs and power lines with it; the process of removing trees from lines and getting power back to residents (and, more importantly, the sewage lift stations. Think about it. Sewage doesn’t just flow downhill to the treatment plant, it has to be pumped. Imagine what happens when the pumps are out of power for a few days to a couple of weeks) required the coordination of local power companies and convoys of literally hundreds (perhaps thousands) of power trucks from out of state. These emergency measures were put into motion before the hurricanes made landfall, and they had to be shifted around a bit while the hurricanes were fidgeting about. These guys all deserve recognition, not just the orchestrators but the guys who worked all day and sometimes all night to restore order. Some of them even died in doing so. All of them, and the people that supported them, deserve our gratitude. I know they were paid, and probably paid well, but I don’t know that they were properly thanked.
So I’d like to stress once again that there are things that the government can do at the federal, state or local level (and sometimes a combination of these) that private enterprise simply cannot do. Cannot do because it lacks decision authority, and cannot do because there’s no incentive for private business to provide emergency aid with any forethought. This is the sort of thing that people will not pay for before the fact, and the sort of thing that would sorely tempt private enterprise to gouge those they should be helping after the fact. In this sense, then, I’m hereby declaring myself a big-government conservative. But really, I always was one. National defense is not something that lends itself to be implemented by state governments, and I’ve worked defense for my entire career. I guess it’s finally time for me to admit what’s always gone, for me, unspoken.
Another last straw for me was this business with the local convention center. Basically we just borrowed nearly $800 million on bond to build a new convention center to compete in a nearly saturated market. And, bafflingly, we’re still considering whether to take another couple of hundred million dollars (as a matchup to a mere $10.5 million in private money) out of tax revenues to pay for a new arena for the Orlando Magic. They’re projecting that the new arena will cost $250 million to build, but if history is any guide it’ll be well over $300 million. Look, if it’s a good investment, the billionaire owner ought to be able to scrape together enough private money to get it done. If not, we’ve got no business getting involved, period. The problem here is that business has influenced local politics to the point where business interests can get apparently projects kicked off independently of their sensibility. If we’ve got to invest over a billion dollars in tax revenues simply to prop up private enterprise, well, the mind boggles.
What we need to be looking at is how to remove the burrs from these activities. There’s no question that FEMA screwed up quite a lot, and in some cases dispensed government money as if it were Mardi Gras beads. There’s also no question that FEMA can and does serve an important purpose. There simply needs to be either a larger dollop of common sense, or a big book of regulations and guidelines. I know which way I’d rather have it.
And we simply have to get our local governments under control. Our last mayor (or, more properly, the one before last; Mayor Dyer is no more), Glenda Hood*, did some…well, questionable things while in office. She and the current city and county government were also constantly attempting to circumvent the so-called Sunshine Law, which required that the doings of government be open to the public. Government should be accessible by business, not steered by it.
*Glenda is Jeb Bush’s biggest mistake. Still, maybe she’s done less damage as SecState than she did as Orlando Mayor.
Having considerable experience with FEMA in the last year (house got flooded in August, filling basement and between 6 and 12 inches on 1st floor), my personal experience is that they worked very politely and efficiently. My only complaint is that after around $5,000, you receive a low interest loan rather than a grant, so we will be repaying most of the money over time.
On the other hand, a neighbor who had a worse set of damage (water filled the sewer lines, which backed up into his house, adding considerably to the mess) found them much less forthcoming, and he is mum on why.
Well, there it is. You’ve summed it up.
“There simply needs to be either a larger dollop of common sense, or a big book of regulations and guidelines.”
What we will get is your considerable dollop of common sense encoded into a big book of regulations and guidelines. We’ll call it self-government and be happy with its inefficiency. Or, we rename the country Singapore.
I hate it when people have free funerals before they die. That’s way too efficient.
Slarti: About getting the burrs out of the system: I have two thoughts. The first: it’s hard, since the bad parts of bureaucracies tend either to be the result of idiotic policies of one sort or another, which it would take someone a lot of time and patience to undo, or patronage hires, which are also hard to get rid of. (Back when people first started talking about cutting the fat out of government, I had just been working in the MA statehouse, and thought: wrong. Most of the fat in government is someone’s relative. So if there are cuts, the meat will go first.)
The second, about municipal government especially: there is absolutely no substitute for an informed and active electorate. If everyone knew the basic outlines of which decisions the municipal government had made, who had really done good work and who had been an idiot, or a grandstander, or downright corrupt, they could vote accordingly. If people even had the sort of basic knowledge that lets them know that X is just a blowhard, while Y is willing to do the annoying, no-glory, but still absolutely necessary work that needs to be done, things would be a lot better. But municipal elections, in particular, tend (except for the highest positions, sometimes) to reflect virtually no knowledge at all, and it’s no surprise that we so often elect idiots.
I think the only solution, really, is for some people who are actually trustworthy to voluntarily undertake the work of really following city council meetings, or the water and sewage department, or whatever, and letting other people know. These people might be journalists, in a perfect world, but in this world they would probably have to be citizens. Maybe they could get blogs, so that their accounts could be more widely disseminated. But of course if they were partisan or in any other way untrustworthy, it would all be for naught.
This is nice, but runs aground when X and Y are roughly equivalent in the blowhard column. And unfortunately there are way too many people engaging in politics instead of government, and far too few voters willing to throw their collective asses out, and (seemingly) the barest smidgen of people who actually have the ability AND the inclination to work at government. A few authors have advanced the idea that maybe government would work better if we press-ganged the able. I don’t find that at all appealing, but I’m not sure how we’d get competent government outside of doing that or something similar.
Well, as for your first paragraph, shut down the worthless War on Drugs, thereby freeing up some space in prison for the truly dangerous creeps.
I can’t really comment on local government, because I believe you are limited in the amount of bandwidth available.
Short version: Around here, the sleaze factor is unprecedented in its depth.
So far it seems the only region in the nation to resist the insane temptation to spend public money for the benefit of conservative billionaires is in liberal California. Los Angeles has been without a major football team for how many years now? All because the people have decided they have better things to do with their money than fund a stadium that would be too pricey for most of them to enjoy anyway.
I think it has almost become a point of pride for the people of Los Angeles that they have so far avoided having their pockets picked. Whenever a proposal to build a new stadium is floated with taxpayer dollars it is always shot down quickly. Perhaps they learned a lesson when the Raiders came to town and Al (Just win baby!) Davis tried to rip them off.
Slartibartfast,
Thanks for the post. It’s really encouraging to see someone who’s a legitimate conservative say without dodging that there are things government is just the best solution for. In the same way, I’m encouraged when I see classic “liberals” admit that there’s a lot of stuff the free market SHOULD be sorting out.
Where the lines lie, of course, is the really sticky discussion. Everyone has a different set of opinions on that topic.
Slarti: Just out of curiousity, why are you forcing yourself to watch Ju-on anyway? There’s this thing called the off switch…
Yeah, I’ve used it. A lot.
I thought The Ring was just about the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I wanted to see Ringu and see if it was even scarier, but first I wanted to compare The Grudge to the original Ju-on. Probably I should watch The Grudge first, because I can’t see Buffy being in something truly frightening. There’s something about Takashi Shimizu’s films that are more intriguing, although they also make less sense than your typical horror film.
I think it’s the odd motions that do it. I remember seeing Jacob’s Ladder and being scared silly over this blurry figure that kept appearing in the movie; the body was always clear but the head was waving around so fast you couldn’t make out any features.
Jacobs Ladder is truly scary,due in large part to that unnatural movement thing; the movie that disturbed me most in that vein was PaperHouse , which I actually only saw the first five minutes of in Film Appreciation at school but scared the pants off me. Its on my to-see list on Screen Select (Uk netflix variant).
I remember seeing Jacob’s Ladder and being scared silly over this blurry figure that kept appearing in the movie; the body was always clear but the head was waving around so fast you couldn’t make out any features.
Ugh, or the end of Altered States (arm blobs stolen, by the way, for The Matrix). Yeagh!
“and (seemingly) the barest smidgen of people who actually have the ability AND the inclination to work at government”
This is only my opinion and not backed by any data, but I’m under the impression that most of the people who are inclined to work in government move towards the state capitals and eventually the federal level, leaving mostly third and fourth tier candidates to work at local levels.
This leaves most of Congress unexplained, I have to say.
“This leaves most of Congress unexplained, I have to say.”
Ah, you meant politicians. I thought you were referring to people who actually worked for a living. My bad on that one. 🙂
I didn’t have my sights set on anything in particular, heh. Scary thing is, US Congress just might be the cream of the representative-government crop.
The Shining.
Gives me the chills just writing it. And there’s an element of ‘all work and no play’ in blog reading/commenting.
On a lighter note, you can’t see it, but I’m in the far background during the opening credit run.
In any federal agency, you can find dedicated people who really make the place run. It’s not always easy to get to them, but they’re there in each one. They’re the real cream.
As for Scotch: Lagavulin. Can’t beat that smoky peat taste.
Sorry to cross threads like that. Guess the thought of good scotch just can’t be contained . . .
Cross-threading is good. Point of information: we were having lunch at a restaurant in Sea World. One entire wall of the restaurant was a window into a huge aquarium containing a variety of sharks and large fish. On our table was a book containing a guide to the various fish. In the guide was an entry for “Red Drum”. At the exact moment I read that, I thought of The Shining.
But, so what? At the moment I wrote the above, I thought of a Thomas Dolby song.
[b]Slart[/b], for those of us who don’t know — is Emily your daughter?
Yes, Opus. She’s the older one. She’s got a relatively mild disability, meaning she’s enough unlike other kids that it’s to some extent a lightning rod for meanness.
Yes! PAPERHOUSE is a must see if you haven’t already.
As to corruption in local/state government, there’s a brilliant film about that as well: Preston Sturges’ THE GREAT MCGINTY. As the prologue reads: “This is the story of two men who met in a banana republic. One of them never did anything dishonest in his life except for one crazy minute. The other never did anything honest in his life except for one crazy minute. They both had to get out of the country.”
And one of the all-time great movie lines – If it wasn’t for graft, you’d get a very low type of people in politics, men without ambition, jellyfish!
There is a reason corruption in fiction works better as a comedy, rather than drama.
“So I’d like to stress once again that there are things that the government can do at the federal, state or local level (and sometimes a combination of these) that private enterprise simply cannot do. Cannot do because it lacks decision authority, and cannot do because there’s no incentive for private business to provide emergency aid with any forethought. This is the sort of thing that people will not pay for before the fact, and the sort of thing that would sorely tempt private enterprise to gouge those they should be helping after the fact.”
The “gouging”, of course, would be the incentive for prive businesses to provide emergency aid with forethought, or even without forethought. It costs real money to bring goods into disaster areas, and private businesses would be happy to do it, and even to invest in the resources to do disaster relief ahead of time, if they could expect to be paid for it.
But if you call that sort of thing “gouging” and pass laws against it, you’ll find businesses uninterested in doing it. So the same “exhorbitant” costs have to be paid regardless, except that they’re paid by taxpayers and all gouging is done in the public sector instead of the private sector.