Category: News

San Francisco has determined that having convictions on your record might make people think less of you. So they’re all in favor of removing criminal convictions:

A young woman arrested for prostitution shared a harrowing tale of leaving her suburban home in the Bay Area and working for a sadistic pimp.

She escaped when her pimp was sent to prison. Now she is back with her family, working part-time and attending college. The poised and articulate 23- year-old wants her criminal past cleared so she can enter the field of her dreams: nursing.

A San Francisco program called Clean Slate may be the answer.

Using a little-known state law, the Clean Slate program run by the San Francisco public defender’s office got more than 1,500 criminal cases cleared last year. Another 2,227 are being processed.

The cleared cases — all committed in San Francisco — range from lesser charges such as prostitution and petty theft to more serious offenses including attempted rape, drug dealing, assault and vehicular manslaughter.

No harm, no foul. Harm? Eh, no foul either.

Sen. Paul Sarbanes won’t seek reelection

Too damn little, too late. When your name has been attached to a piece of legislation designed to hobble corporations and to transfer wealth from publicly-owned companies to accounting firms and the government, you’ve been in office too long. When your legislation is used as a perjorative amongst well-informed people (SOX you!), your retirement comes too late.

That McCain-Feingoldin’ Federal-power-mad, doin’-somethin legislator. May he retire in piece and not inflict current legislators with his lobbying.

Local government works for big corporations; however, apparently in Des Moines, the local government also obeys the dicta of big labor. After all, they threw out a low bid for a city contract probably because the low bidder used non-union employees:

Des Moines City Council members rejected saving $500,000 on a water detention basin project, turning away all bids because the lowest was too low.

The savings would have been large enough to nearly pay for last year’s decision to restore power to 4,200 streetlights that had been turned off in a cost-saving move.

“I respect the council members because I know they have a tough job, but this was” wrong, said Thelma Saxton, whose family owns Saxton Inc., which employs non-union labor.

Officials of Corell Contractor Inc. of West Des Moines and a lobbyist for the Central Iowa Building and Construction Trades Council contacted council members before this week’s vote and asked them not to hire Saxton. Corell employs union labor.

Iowa laws do not require cities to use union labor.

Silly newspapers. Laws are for fools, and government sweetness is for corporations and unions.

Apparently, the Easter Bunny is too Christian for some malls:

The Easter Bunny is a vanishing breed.

Not that there’s a shortage of 6-foot white rabbits carrying baskets of colored eggs. It’s just that Mr. Shopping Mall Bunny is becoming more politically correct.

The bunny at The Gardens mall Easter egg hunt last weekend — oops, make that just plain “egg hunt” — was called Garden Bunny.

“The name just complemented The Gardens of the Palm Beaches,” mall Marketing Director Jeannie Roberts said.

Saturday, Baxter the Bunny is available for photos at the Mall at Wellington Green. At Town Center in Boca Raton, Peter Rabbit will hand out goodies and pose for pictures.

“Because we’re such a multicultural community, it’s good just to remain neutral,” mall General Manager Sam Hosen said.

Unfortunately, the lack of diversity training has led to the ignorance which leads some cretins to identify Christian biblical origins for the Easter Bunny. Perhaps they think it stems from an old tradition enumerated in Deuteronomy or Leviticus. Golden calves, bad, but chocolate rabbits are okay.

Group: U.S. losing competitive edge:

Leaders of high-tech companies said the United States risks losing its competitive edge without significant new investments in education, research and development and the spread of broadband technology.

Whose investment?

They also called on Congress to increase basic research funding and make permanent a research and development tax credit; promote broadband development, in part by minimizing regulations; enact a U.S.-Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement; promote cyber-security initiatives; and continue to take steps to reduce frivolous lawsuits.[Emphasis mine, and probably theirs.]

You know, I cannot think of any personal problem I have that couldn’t be helped with buckets of free taxpayer money. Except for perhaps this distaste I have for spending tax money to benefit businesses.

I’m very disappointed to see that my State Senator has decided that a local company needs handouts to stick around:

But the battle between Missouri and Illinois could be just heating up. Express Scripts would get an estimated $35 million in incentives from Illinois to move its headquarters across the Mississippi River, a Missouri state senator said he has learned.

To keep the company in Missouri, Sen. John Loudon, R-Ballwin, said he has introduced an 11th-hour bill to improve Missouri’s menu of economic incentives. He filed the bill March 1 after meeting with St. Louis County officials.

“There is very real competition from other communities throughout the country that are making inquiries into one of our fastest-growing companies,” said Denny Coleman, president of the St. Louis County Economic Council. “The array of incentives programs we have here are not as strong as our competitor states.”

I don’t remember reading much about the preeminence of corporations in this country’s founding documents, but they certainly get a lot of attention and support from the governments, ainna?

Martin Braeske, planning supervisor for the St. Louis City school district, explains how finance works as he discusses the sale of schoolhouses:

The use of historic tax credits to restore the properties has been a factor in the bulk of the sales, Braeske said. “With schools like Emerson, developers need the credits to make the deal profitable, and they have to preserve the historic elements of the schools to qualify for the credits, so it’s a win all around,” he said.

That is, to comply with the government regulations, “private” developers need tax breaks from the government to buy the buildings for “free enterprise” reasons. Meanwhile, everyone else continues to pay taxes unabated because they’re not businesspeople or bureaucrats. A winner for all the people who matter.

Democrat state politicians are upset that Matt Blunt isn’t spending state tax money to fly himself around the state:

But state Democratic Party spokesman Jack Cardetti asserted that Blunt is once again showing “a lack of integrity” by allowing campaign donors to wield inappropriate influence in his administration.

“Special interests picked his Cabinet, and now they’re taxiing him around the state to further curry favor with him,” Cardetti said.

According to the Missouri Democrat party, if you don’t forcibly take money from taxpayers to spend on your own convenient travel plans, you lack integrity.

Italy Foreign Minister Disputes U.S. Claim:

Italy’s foreign minister said Tuesday that American troops killed an Italian intelligence officer in Iraq by accident, but he disputed Washington’s version of events, demanding a thorough U.S. investigation of the shooting and that “the culprits be punished.”

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told parliament that the car carrying the intelligence officer and an ex-hostage to freedom was not speeding and was not ordered to stop by U.S. troops at a checkpoint, contrary to what U.S. officials say.

So Fini saw this how? Was it the intricate network of Italian spy satellites, or was he on the scene masquerading as an Iraqi farmer?

Here comes the intersection of gun rights and terrorism, and shockingly, they want to limit gun rights for our security: U.S. let terror suspects buy guns, feds say

Dozens of terrorist suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to buy firearms legally in the United States last year, according to a congressional investigation that points up major vulnerabilities in federal gun laws.

People suspected of being members of terrorist groups are not automatically barred from legally buying guns, and the new investigation, conducted by congressional officials at the Government Accountability Office, indicated that people with clear links to terrorist groups had taken advantage of this gap on a regular basis.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement officials and gun control groups have voiced increasing concern about the prospect of having a terrorist walk into a gun shop, legally buying an assault rifle or other type of weapon and using it in an attack.

So now law enforcement officials and gun control groups want to prevent people on secret, unlisted watch groups from buying guns. Not people convicted of a crime, but a group of people who used to be called “presumed innocent.” If Congress passes legislation to prevent suspects from buying guns, watch for more suspicious people on secret watch lists. Anyone who wants to buy a gun, for instance, could be suspected of wanting the gun to commit a crime.

Some slippery slopes are so steep that they’re vertical drops, werd.

Since I don’t have anything witty or insightful to say today, perhaps you should just go read the Chicago Tribune‘s Steve Chapman in his column "The illusions of the minimum wage", which begins:

Asking Democrats if they favor an increase in the minimum wage is like asking Martha Stewart if she’d mind sharing some decorating ideas. There are few things they’d rather do, and Sen. Ted Kennedy thinks it is high time.

The Massachusetts Democrat is offering a measure that would boost the wage floor from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over the next two years. He notes that it has not been lifted since 1997, during which time senators have gotten seven pay raises. “If the Senate is serious about an anti-poverty agenda,” he said, “let’s start by raising the minimum wage.” Republicans, meanwhile, might accept an increase of $1.10, as proposed by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

It may seem like an inescapable truth that if you increase the amount employers pay their lowest-wage workers, you will have fewer poor people. Money, after all, is what they lack, and a higher minimum wage means more money to those in the worst-paying jobs.

In fact, this is one of those obvious facts that turns out not to be a fact at all. The available evidence suggests that raising the minimum wage doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.

You see, the gentleman can sound kinda smart about things when he’s not la-dee-dah about foreign policy.

Norville to Anchor From ‘Home Confinement’:

Now HERE’S a good excuse for working at home. Deborah Norville will anchor Monday’s program of “Inside Edition” from her home on Long Island, N.Y., to try to give viewers a taste of what Martha Stewart’s home confinement is like.

Muhahahaha! I laugh with almost hysterical tears. I work from home, so I sometimes don’t leave the house for weeks. You want to know what it’s like?

It’s maddening, but I like madness. It keeps me company and walks on cats’ paws.

Seriously, what’s next? Deborah Norville drives her own car so viewers know what commuting is like?

(Link seen on Tim Blair’s site.)

If I were a cynic, or a hopeful writer of suspense fiction, I might make something different of this story: Italian Journalist Rejects U.S. Account.

Okay, we have these salient events:

1. Sympathetic “journalist” disappears, “kidnapped” by “insurgents.”
2. Releases a tape making normal coerced political demands, which doesn’t differ from her normal uncoerced political demands.
3. Her government “negotiates” her release, which involves paying ransom money.
4. Upon her release, she claims the United States military “targeted her”–but missed–with 300 or 400 shots–after which her car looks like this, but
5. The only casualty is the Italian intelligence officer that acted as the bag man, who took one round to the temple, almost execution style; everyone else in the car miraculously survived.

And when the heat cools off and the journalist “recovered,” she would retire to Switzerland with her Iraqi lover on their ill-gotten loot.

I would title the book Ill Manifest.

Update: Real-life mystery writer Roger L. Simon offers a plot.

Update II: Baldilocks, who deploys a Ludlumian title for a post in The Sgrena Gambit, indicates that the car depicted above might not be the car alledgedly shot 300-400 times.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch waxes romantic about homelessness in its Metro section today: For two men, it was a place to call home.

Even now, more than a month later, the discarded bits of their lives litter the ground around the little green bench — a few twist-off beer caps, a couple of dozen cigarette butts and some scraps of candy wrappers half-buried in the March mud.

For the better part of a year it had been their bench, and even on those rainy nights when they would leave to take shelter under the roof of a nearby bus stop, they would always return. There was no address, not in the strict sense of the word, but for Morris White and Kerry Smith, it was the closest thing to a home they would know for much of 2004.

They arrived for the first time in the late spring, when the city air was warm and clean, and the sweetgum trees were heavy with new leaves.

I don’t understand. I thought homelessness was bad, but here the Post-Dispatch sepia-tones the story of two men who preferred to live on the streets to living with their families or in homeless shelters with their pissant regulations.

If these homeless people don’t care to change their condition, why should I? Why should tax money be spent on them, other than it’s free?

I doubt the Post-Dispatch wanted to raise these questions.

Well, that’ how I would have titled this story, which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled “St. Louis County lures 300 jobs from Alton”:

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. will move 300 jobs from Alton to Creve Coeur as part of a deal with St. Louis County that could net the company up to $4.2 million in tax breaks.

Those workers will move into a new 10-story headquarters building just off Interstate 270 and Olive Boulevard, where they’ll be joined by 200 employees from Clayton and a dozen or so from Chesterfield, under the deal unveiled Friday.

You see, the corporation is getting $4,200,000 in tax breaks, but the St. Louis County Executive says:

“Of course I’m excited,” said County Executive Charlie Dooley. “When someone tells you they’re going to move jobs someplace else, you take it very seriously. We need to do this to expand our tax base and keep our tax burden low.”

That expanded tax base isn’t coming from the company, dear friends. It’s coming from the employees who will have to travel further to work but will have to buy lunch in Missouri instead of Illinois, expanding the St. Louis County sales tax base. It will help, too, when they gas up here, since they can pay for our roads more cheaply than they can pay for Illinois roads.

Remember, St. Louis County government serves itself and its corporate juicers, not the residents. If you don’t believe it, buy a house where developers will want to build a strip mall in 2014.

Another coming of age story for young men results in charges: Teacher Accused of Sex Abuse:

A Braxton County middle school teacher is in police custody after allegedly confessing to sexual misconduct with five of her students.

The number could increase, as she could not be sure of an exact number because she was wearing a bag at the time.

Archaelogists uncover three coffins, mummies behind a secret door:

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered three coffins containing mummies behind a secret door that was hidden behind 42-hundred-year-old statues.

They didn’t even need an elf with them, werd.