TheAgitator.com
Morning Links
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008- Sad piece in the New Yorker about one of the hidden costs of “getting tough” on immigration: We now have the innocent children of illegal immigrants locked up in detention prisons for the crimes of their parents.
- Man leaves the city of Baltimore after a Kafka-like nightmare over parking tickets. Thanks to Pete Eyre for the tip.
- Eminent domain abuse in Houston.
- Woman is locked up in an Arkansas jail, then nearly dies of thirst when she’s forgotten about over a long weekend.
- Introducing salvia, yer’ scary, bring-on-the-moral-panic drug of the day.
The worst part about that woman in Arkansas? She was arrested for allegedly selling pirated CDs.
“It’s rare,” Michel admitted. “The city tries to avoid using its eminent domain powers.”
*cough*bullshit*cough
Houston is the most annex-happy place on earth…Ask the residents of Kingwood about their experience with the city…
Note to all authoritah figures: It’s not about drugs, it’s about FREEDOM. Absent harm to others, the state has no business telling me what kind of day to have.
From the article on Salvia Divinorum regulation:
“the plant impairs judgment and the ability to drive”
Here’s an epiphany: No, actually, using the plant WHILE DRIVING is what impairs judgment and the ability to drive.
By this reckoning, ANYTHING you MIGHT be able to do while driving, which would impair your ability to drive well, should be made illegal. You know, like sleeping, for example. Sleeping while driving would almost CERTAINLY impair your driving, therefore sleeping should be illegal.
“As soon as we make one drug illegal, kids start looking around for other drugs they can buy legally. This is just the next one,” said Florida state Rep. Mary Brandenburg …
Praise be! She sees the light!
who has introduced a bill to make possession of salvia a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Nevermind.
We have the same nonsense going on here in Nebraska, only our local police force decided not to wait for a specific law (which is pending in front of the Unicameral):
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2008/03/11/news/local/doc47d5ffa78ac65085365342.txt
Houston Eminent Domain Story:
To get a perspective of the lot and the surrounding development follow this link and look at the picture on the right.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5599975.html
You’ll notice the Wulfe development project completely surrounds the land for the proposed park except for the street (San Felipe) which runs along the north side of the lot – a very busy street most hours of the day. This area is high priced both in terms of residential property and shopping. It is considered a hot market.
The lot in question is 7200 sqft. Considering there is currently no parking, and the Wulfe development project borders both sides of the lot, I wonder who is going to provide parking if it will be provided at all. If it’s going to be a walking-park, I wonder who’s going to frequent it the most? Could it be the future residents of the Wulfe high-rise development?
According to Texas state law, the city is well within its power to seize the land for a park. However, just because they CAN do it doesn’t mean they SHOULD do it.
The attitude about drugs common among many legislators seems to be that simply being a drug that has any intoxicating effect and is not caffeine, tobacco or alcohol, is sufficient reason for something to be illegal.
Equally vexing are the parents who cannot accept that their child might have had some problems that cannot be blamed on some malignant force or substance and always have to find someone or something to blame for their tragedy.
Finally, I can say from experience and observation that salvia is totally incompatible with driving. I am also nearly certain that no one has ever even considered driving a car while under the influence of that drug.
I live in Baltimore city and have my own ticket story:
One time I was home for lunch and they booted my car while I was eating my sandwich, so I called the parking division to pay the tickets so I could get the boot removed. While I was on the phone with them, the tow guy came and started setting up to tow it away. I was actually able to get him to talk to the parking division (who I already had on the phone) and he not only didn’t tow my car, he took off the boot for me.
But it was a close call.
Anyone else notice this in the salvia story? .. “In the Delaware suicide,……the autopsy found no traces of the drug in his system, but the medical examiner listed it as a contributing cause.”
They must be using the same kind of medical examiner as Mississippi. By the way Balko, any thoughts on the new Greenfield chief of police?
Yeah, the salvia story is riddled with stupidness, moronicity, and general ignoramusitis*
(*inflamation of the ignoramus)
It’s always “For the Children”. Why can’t these do gooders just let people do with their body that they want to.
It’s a weed for chrissake
South Park saw this one coming. Note how this story ends:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Days
But didn’t you read what they said? “If it saves just one child, it’s worth it”.
They’re going to ban mop buckets next.
haha! it took them quite a while to catch on to this one. It’s not new. I tried it at least 7 years ago.
They don’t need to make it illegal. I don’t think many people try it more than once. It is the opposite of fun.
That Hutto story is appalling! I live in Austin and had no idea that all this was going on there. I’m for secure borders–but not at the expense of our humanity.
They don’t boot cars in Minneapolis — they’re much more efficient than that: The tow-trucks follow the cops.
We call it the “ten second tag”. (Tows are not supposed to follow snowbird, expired tab and other parking violation tickets for 24hrs, but that is seldom the case; if you’re lucky enough to get to your car before a tow-truck, it’s only because they’re busy elsewhere.)
Additionally, the police databases regarding the yards where cars are towed to are frequently incorrect, leading many to assume their cars have been stolen. Result? The cops get to auction off a lot of sweet rides their owners never knew they had.
==//==
A superhero we need.
Last time I checked pirating CDs and being in the country illegally were crimes. Somebody does need to lose their job over this though. Not necessarily that bailiff though.
I can’t believe that parking story got up so high on reddit… what a strange site. I submit good stuff, nobody votes for it. I submit a story about a dude getting harassed over parking tickets, it goes up like a rocket.
I guess it’s like man vs. woman jokes – they play to all audiences.
On the Houston eminent domain story, the video notes that the last offer was for $750,000, which is “double what the brothers paid for it back in 1982…” But a quick trip to the CPI inflation calculator shows that $1 today is worth about 46 cents in 1982 dollars. They are being offered a real price less than what they paid for it. Maybe that is a fair price — I have no way of knowing. But it is interesting that the video sort of gives an impression that they are turning up their noses at a nice return. (Even if there was no inflation, doubling your money in 26 years comes to less than a 3 percent annual return.)