Once Again, Who Are The Haters?

A couple of weeks ago, The Daily Kos, the top Democratic weblog, posted a statement in the wake of the first Fallujah murders calling the men who died "mercenaries" and saying, of their deaths, "Screw them." You can go to my Kerry Mockery page and read his whole statement; it's in a graphic about halfway down the page on the right.

He got blasted by the blogosphere. At first, he disappeared the page, but not before legions of bloggers had already saved it. Kos was called on his dishonesty and was forced to take down the page altogether, but not before Kos posted a mealy-mouthed not-quite apology. But the damage was done and many Democratic blog and web sites (including the John Kerry official campaign site) delinked him.

Well, today comes more hate from the Daily Kos, this time from a co-blogger of his named Soj. This post has a standard PR photo of Secretary of State Colin Powell with the caption, "Yes suh! Yes suh! Right away suh!" She calls him an "Uncle Tom." Soj has an extremely long post that includes a lot of excerpts from various testimony and briefings Powell, has given in support of her contention that Powell is doing nothing for "his race" and is in fact sending many young black men to die because he is a shill for a "crooked regime." She makes the false claim that the Army is disproportionately black, and some more outlandish claims as well. It's unfortunate, as she does have some good things; they got shadowed by her stupid opening move.

The page is still up and unaltered as of 9:45AM CDT. Read the lengthy comments and you'll see that Soj is nearly unanimously panned by her Democratic and liberal peers. She makes some noises about not communicating well and being misunderstood and "falling into the 'merc' trap," but never apologises.

On her own site. Soj now has this to say:

Well it looks like I created a "semantic bomb" yesterday with my post about Powell being an "Uncle Tom". Here is the post and attached comments from the DailyKos website....

Anyway, I apologize to anyone if they felt the term "Uncle Tom" was offensive. My primary goal was to raise awareness of the incredible efforts Powell has put forth in promoting the Bush and neocon agenda. Everyone from Richard Clarke to General Shinsheki (himself an ethnic Georgian) have realized what a mistake serving Bush is, why can't Powell?

Notice she doesn't apologise for what she said, but for how you felt about it. Her claim that "everyone...realized what a mistake serving Bush is..." is just stupid on its face.

Make sure you go down in the Daily Kos thread, as there's yet more racist offense! Someone posted a graphic showing Condoleeza Rice in a WWII-era women's uniform with the logo, "I'm Fighting For WHITEY!"

Apparently, having cornered the market on fighting racism, Democrats now believe that race hatred is their playground. Can you even begin to imagine the firestorm something similar to this, done by a Republican, would cause? I really want to post something like that, say Ted Kennedy in a rare photo with blacks (I know it's rare; I went searching for some. I had to give up!) with something offensive just to see what kind of reaction it gets.

You can bet that it would be picked up on by the big media, which passed on the first Kos dustup and I would wager will also pass on the second, even though it now establishes a pattern at Daily Kos. Thanks to Rev. Don Sensing, of One Hand Clapping, for his post on this. You might also watch Instapundit during the day. He hasn't posted on it yet, but I suspect he will and will flood the zone with links.

Just A Reminder

You can find my Carol Chumney graphics at the Carol Chumney Wallop Page. If you have ideas or suggestions of your own, send them in! Email addy is on the upper-left of the page.

And don't forget the Kerry Mockery page while you're at it. It's slipped to Number Three in the Google rankings for "Kerry mockery," so let's get those links going and help me get it to Number One!

Radio, Television and Censorship

Howard Stern and the massive fines being levelled against Clear Channel by the Federal Communications Commission have brought radio and television censorship into the national debate again. Unfortunately, most folks don't know what they're talking about.

The Communications Act of 1934 gave the Federal government the right to manage the airwaves. It was derived from the Communications Act of 1927, which defined the airwaves as a community good under the control of the government, which was explicitly given the right to run it in the common interest.

The content of any programming could not have "obscene, indecent, or profane language." Otherwise anything could be programmed, though the Federal Radio Commission could take into consideration programming when renewing licenses. A forerunner of the "equal time rule" was stated in section (18) of the Radio Act of 1927 which ordered stations to give equal opportunities for political candidates. The act did vest in the Federal Radio Commission the power to revoke licences and give fines for violations of the act.

Licenses came from the Radio Act of 1912, which wasn't an effort to control content but merely a war-time measure to keep the airwaves clear and know who was broadcasting. It was seen as a reasonable measure for an exploding technology in a time of war. Does that sound familiar?

The government soon found that it merely could issue and sometime deny licenses, but its hands were tied. The government asked for reasonable extensions of the Act to give it some regulatory muscle. Again, sound familiar?

That led to the CA of 1927, which suddenly codified and regulated a whole lot. But it too proved not enough, and with the explosion of radio networks and the introduction of television, the broadcasting companies and radio manufacturers asked for the government to step in to help control the chaotic situation. So, the modified CA of 1934.

And that's how things have stood ever since, up through modifications to the CA34 in 1987 and then in 1998. Radio and broadcast television have statute laws that say explicitly what cannot be done: "obscene, indecent, or profane language." That law has stood innumerable Supreme Court tests; in fact, much of the CA34 was shaped by Supreme Court challenges to the CA27.

The fundamental thinking then was that turning on a radio or television, which is in the house (and later car), invites anything being carried on the airwaves into the house. Radios and televisions might be found anywhere or brought into public view anywhere. With cable, you had to buy the cable, have it installed, and then buy the channel package. The thinking was that this was different, although it's a slender difference indeed. That difference has also withstood Supreme Court challenge. I haven't heard yet if subscription radio (Sirius or SM Satellite Radio) would be under the same standard as cable television and dish.

So, modern viewers who look at television, broadcast and cable, as the same thing are uninformed. Legally speaking, they are not and haven't ever been. The FCC does have a clear and solid right to control content in "the public interest." Folks who don't like that can try to have the law changed.

Unfortunately for them, that's terribly unlikely. Most of the legislation and regulatory work of the FCC is by and for the media companies, telephony industry and the electronics companies. They all have vested interests and financial security based on the status quo, and the ability to influence Congress to regulate in their favor.

Short answer? You're screwed. Things are what they are and aren't likely to change. Gradualism got us here. What began as a reasonable effort to make sure that early radio hobbyists and inventors didn't walk all over each other, and to make sure emergency stations were always manned to prevent tragedies like the Titanic ushered in government oversight. Light touch grew heavier, as the government found that it couldn't conduct oversight without some teeth to bite with. Then came an exploding new technology and business, with all the market chaos you'd expect. Everyone wants someone to do something, so they turn to government and give it absolute control. Then begins the long tug-of-war to control the controllers.

What shouldn't have been government-regulated becomes a government property. It was the same with automobiles. Why do you need a license to operate a car? Who "owns" the roads? Why is that? We're seeing it happen with the Internet. Think I'm kidding? Look closely.

We're Number Three! We're Number Three!

Social policy organisation Partners for Livable Communities has released a study intended to recognise cities doing things right (in their measurements), to encourage other cities to emulate their policies (liberal social progressivism). Called America's Most Livable Communities, there are four categories, and in "Regions" (i.e. multi-state urban areas) Memphis came in Number Three! Yay team!

Any sign of Nashvegas in any of the four categories? Nope.

In your face, Nashville!

Dinner Of Champions

Tonight I had beef cubes cooked in hoi-sin sauce, drizzled with cheddar cheese. OK, smothered in some leftover Cheez-Whiz. Steak fries with ketchup. Yummmmmmm.

Ketchup is still a vegetable, right?

Rock And Roll

This year is the "Fiftieth Anniversary of Rock and Roll," at least here in Memphis and in the world of semi-official institutions and retailers. Whatever. Memphis makes a big deal because we have Elvis, the trump card of all trumps. But the subject can, and should, be open to debate.

An excellent case can be made that Louis Jordan, the jazz musician, was the true father of rock in 1947, with his recording of "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" or Roy Brown in 1946 with "Good Rockin' Tonight." The term itself, rock and roll, has been around since at least the Thirties. The whole post-war Forties was spotted with music a modern listener would find indistinguishable from the certified rock and roll of the Fifties. You can also make the case it was Bill Haley's seminal "Rock Around the Clock." Nick Tosches wrote a great book on the subject, The Forgotten Heroes of Rock and Roll.

Whatever way, there was a burgeoning music rising out of the black community with the help of white radio disk jockeys into the larger white listening audience since 1950. Maybe they were false starts, or the right music in the wrong context. Maybe it was black faces, as Sam Phillips presciently noted: "If I could find a white man who sings with the Negro feel, I'll make a million dollars."

Maybe trying to find that exact pivot point, that moment of conception, is pointless?

You See? I Told You

I've blogged a couple of times on events happening across the country that, taken individually, aren't that odd but which add up to an ominous picture. There are moves being made by the Federal government, the Army and the Selective Service that pave the way for the reintroduction of a military draft.

Presidential candidate Ralph Nader (remember him?) has also noticed and brought the subject into the national debate. I'm telling you that if President Bush wins a second term, you'll see overt action on this within two years.

Also notice how Nader has all but disappeared since he announced? The Dems have two approaches to Nader: slash him for being a spoiler and refuse to talk about him to keep his media profile as low as possible. Don't think there's some media complicity with the Democratic effort to pretend Nader doesn't exist?

A Bold Experiment

I rag on the Commercial Appeal pretty hard, but they deserve. With great power comes great responsiblity, give light and the people will find their own way, neutrality is not a pick and choose philosophy, and all that.

But this time, the Commercial Appeal is taking a big, bold step and they most definitely deserve some applause. They are going to blog the Beale Street Music Festival!

That's one huge undertaking. They will set up a central blog open to any(registered)one who wants to contribute posts, and only minimally edit the contributions (largely just eliminating profanity and libel). This will be one very interesting read.

You can go to Jon Sparks' CA blog to get the details.

Way to GO, CA.

Fine For Thee But Not For Me

Sunday's Commercial Appeal had a story on Germantown's experiment with traffic cameras that I've already commented on (see down below). I already pointed out some practical objections.

Today's Commercial Appeal editorial is on that story. It always takes a couple of days for the paper to catch up like this. The demands of the editorial process and the slowness of print media, dontcha know.

It's sad to see the CA blandly agree with a blithe dismissal of the very important issues at hand. Privacy concerns? Well, they've already been washed away in a sea of previous violations, so what's your worry? Problems with incorrect identification or no identification of violating autos? Eh, "imperfect." Extra cost to the City in an era of sqeaky-tight budgets? Not to worry -- it's "a small price to pay."

If that's the case, let's offer this idea, which I overlooked in my post below. How about we hire a whole lot more officers and flood the streets with them? Would that still be a "small price to pay?" The problem we have now is that cops turn a blind eye to minor violations because they must focus their time on the big crimes. Drivers know that. If we have more officers on the streets so that we can focus on all violations, that changes the environment. It also has the distinct side-effect of reducing overall crime, because more officers will be out on any given shift. That's an idea we can try now, without the need for study and with a high likelihood of immediate benefits. It's the Giuliani "quality of life" approach and it works.

Speaking of giving up rights, let's ask the Commercial Appeal if they would mind a few, minor, limitations to their rights. Nothing big. How about, all editorials must come signed, so we know for sure who wrote them? That's no big deal. And why not print corrections in the same section and on the same page as the original error, so it bears equal weight and notice to the mistake? That's just a tiny thing. Do you think the Commercial Appeal would have a problem with that?

I thought so.

Free Choice?

I don't usually read Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi C. Thomas. She is too general in her topics and too lightweight in her approach for my tastes. But the headline of her Tuesday column caught my eye: (S)paying addicts ignores hard stuff.

She pastes activist Barbara Harris for paying addicts for either sterilising themselves or getting long-term birth control. Harris practices social policy at the hardest-nosed level -- cash economics.

Thomas seems most miffed that Harris looks at humans as animals, which in fact we are. Folks like Thomas who would like to turn a blind eye to that reality are part of the problem. We are animals, and losing sight of that leads to social policy set by idealists and utopians that quickly becomes disconnected from reality. The basic principles are unquestioned, but "eugenics" has become a taboo topic since World War II. Like it or not, we need to find some level of looking at ourselves that way.

Thomas makes the mistake of claiming that Harris is saying humans are pets. Harris looks at how we treat pets, and our livestock, then looks at how we treat ourselves. What we know is best in the animals we are guardians for is also what's best for us. Harris offers a choice to addicts, one they are free to decline. Heck, Thomas could offer addicts more than Harris to get them to decline, if she wanted. Nothing's stopping her, as nothing stops Harris, as nothing is stopping the addicts.

She's miffed at Harris giving addicts her own money up front, but apparently has no trouble with society taking money from all of us to give to addicts when they have children that become wards of the State in one form or another. Is Harris' direct-action approach worse than Thomas' palming off the problem on the "government?"

Thomas also does a dirty thing:

A disproportionate number of Harris's clients are black or Hispanic, but this isn't about race.

She could've snipped that sentence from her column and it would've been true. But she stuck it in, and by introducing the topic she has raised it in her readers' minds. Dirty, dirty pool

Thomas chastises Harris for being on "the wrong front in the war on drugs," which is ludicrous. Harris is in the war on population growth, especially women (and men) who will bring children into this world automatically at a deficit in their journey. Thomas needs to rethink herself.

Monday Meme

I've always wanted to start one of these. Help me out by copy-and-pasting the following to your own page and then answering.

Be honest: What five words describe you that your friends would agree with?

My answers:
Intelligent
Funny
Weird
Ambitionless
Arrogant

Holy Crap!

Well, I've been busy this weekend. There's lots and lots of reading down below, including three very long posts. That should keep y'all busy for a while.

Just a reminder, too, that the Carol Chumney Wallop Page is now up. She thinks the Memphis Flyer was rude? Hahahahahahahahaha.... Feel free to spread the word and to borrow the graphics if you want.

I have errands to run Monday, so posting may be light, but then there's a whole lot of reading ahead to keep ya busy. Enjoy!

Cover Songs

A while back Say Uncle posted a list of some of his favorite songs. I meant to do something with that, but the idea got lost for a while. Today I want to make that up.

Please note that my definition of "cover" is pretty lax. I'll even consider an artist rerecording the song, if they find something new or play it substantially differently. And my tastes in music tend to the obscure, so bear with me. The list will have the covering band with the song and the name of the original artist in quotes after.

In no particular order:

* "Don't Fear The Reaper;" Oingo Boingo (Blue Oyster Cult)
I love the BOC; they are one of my all-time favorite bands, hands down, even today. They're still out there touring and recording new stuff! Oingo Boingo are OK. I always thought them just as herky-jerky sounding as (singer/songwriter) Danny Elfman's movie soundtracks. But this is a nicely reverential version that still manages to sound like OB. Their lead guitarist slightly reworks the signature riff and the band works in some feedbacky noise at the end that suits the mood.

* "Neon Lights," Love Tractor (Kraftwerk)
Love Tractor was an instrumental band from the Athens, Georgia, scene that produced REM and the B-52s, who got the limelight. LT was part of the second tier of artists from around that time, along with Pylon; good, but never broke through. LT tackled this Kraftwerk song as Beatle-esque raga rock, with lush guitars and dreamy production, transforming the song's original sterility and coldness into something warm and human. Many folks who hear this -- and know Kraftwerk -- will be deep into the song before they recognise it, which shows just how good the original song was, to have survived the shift, and just how well it was reinvented.

* "Like A Hurricane," Roxy Music (Neil Young)
Neil's original is all quiet fury, sustained swirling energy; prototypical American guitar rock. Roxy Music were the quintessential English glam/art rock band whose catalog of songs takes in a huge breadth of styles. Their version is just as powerful, and as swirling, but in a very different way. It's also reverential, because lead singer Bryan Ferry is a stylist who knows to respect the song. And it's a great workout for Roxy guitarist Phil Manzanera, who shines.

* "A Forest," The Cure (The Cure)
Can a band cover themselves? In this case, Robert Smith redoes this song in a live version that blisters. The original version was from the band's mondo-depresso era, the Faith and Pornography albums. It was dank and claustrophobic and, in the context, hopeless. On a double-pack 45 a couple of years later, they released a live version. This production was airy and open and Smith used a flanged guitar that emphasised strumming. The guitar playing by the end is all strumming and phasing and it sears your brain. Nothing hopeless here.

* "Purple Haze," Mahogany Rush (Jimi Hendrix)
What if Hendrix had state-of-the-art recording technology from the late Seventies when he recorded this classic? Imagine how much more powerful this song would be. Well, Mahogany Rush was led by Frankie Marino, a Hendrix worshipper. He even learned to play guitar with his other hand -- and upside-down and backwards like Hendrix -- just to be like The Master! They recording a completely note-for-note version of the song that takes everything you love about the original and makes it sound more contemporary. Hard to explain, you have to hear it. Powerful.

* "1969," The Sisters of Mercy (Iggy and the Stooges)
The Stooges were a Michigan band from the Seventies who were all about Raw Power. Loud, primitive, primal, carnal. Guitar worship mixed with punk icon and source, Iggy Pop, fronting the band in naked fury and lust. The Sisters of Mercy were a late Seventies Goth band; in fact, they helped lay much of the archetype for what Goth later became: sepulchral, deep singing; gloomy subjects; lots of black outfits and smoke on stage. The Sisters didn't have a human drummer, but a machine called Dr. Avalanche, which they used to great effect in their songs. Their version of the apocalyptic "1969" turns Raw Power into whipsnap precision. Rather than the Stooges being hurtled along by energy and anger ("It's 1969, OK / There's war across the USA"), the Sisters are being ping-ponged by outside forces. It's just as powerful, but in a different way.

* "The Passenger," Siouxsie and the Banshees (Iggy Pop)
Same as what I said above about the Igster, although this album comes from his collaboration with David Bowie (!). The song is all about the alienation of driving aimlessly through a decaying industrial city. In the Banshees version, Siouxsie, a vocalist of limited but enormously stylish range, mimics Iggy, but the band redoes the song in a very English kind of way. Faithful, but ornate. It's like the difference between actually driving through the industrial wasteland and watching an arthouse movie of driving through the industrial wasteland. But it's a very, very good movie.

* "Ring of Fire," Wall of Voodoo (Johnny Cash)
Voodoo is another of my all-time favorite bands. If you've heard "Mexican Radio," that's them. It's unfortunate that this was their one-hit wonder because, although that's exactly how they sound, they were so much more. Ennio Moriconi spaghetti-western soundtrack music from a futuristic Twilight Zone. They recorded this early in their career and played it in concert all the way through. It begins with a deep pulsating drone, then Marc Moreland's guitar, hot-miked and all cheesy Western, plays the riff. Front man Stan Ridgway then sings the lyrics in his trademark voice. Wisecracking irony in flesh. Even being sincere, his nasal voice still dripped with it. Spare, spellbinding version that ends in guitar feedback.

* "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," Catherine Wheel (Mission of Burma)
This song was part of a group of "secret cover tracks" on a Catherine Wheel CD. CW were an alt-metal band from England in the mid-Nineties. Neither heavy metal or hard rock, but very, very powerful and very, very smart. Their record company tried to slot them in with grunge, but they aren't that either. Guitar-based, loud but with a superior control of their dynamics, thoughtful and intelligent lyrics. A great package that never caught on, sad to say. Mission of Burma were a Boston punk-ish band that never got much notice, but were hugely influential on later bands. Angular, experimental, also loud (They gave their guitar player tinnitus!), and not afraid to confound their audience. "Revolver" is a melodic and melancholy song about pent-up anger ("That's when I reach for my revolver / that's then it all gets blown away"), that goes from quiet verses to bursts of soaring riffery in the choruses. The Catherine Wheel version is note-for-note, but they bring their trademark power and dynamics to the song, along with far superior production values to the indy original, to make it soar.

* "Ever Fallen In Love," Fine Young Cannibals (The Buzzcocks)
Many of you will have heard this, back in the Eighties. Smooth singing over a lush mid-tempo track. The original though was a high-velocity punk rock song! Really! The Buzzcocks were often compared to the Ramones, who were their direct inspiration, but had far higher pop smarts and melodic sense. This is another example of how genius songwriting means a song can be redone in almost any way and still sound great.

* "Bela Lugosi's Dead," Until December (Bauhaus)
Bauhaus were another archetypal Goth band. This was one of their earliest hits. More on them next. Until December was a San Francisco "gay, metal disco band" as their front man once described them. Their live version of the Bauhaus song is reverential and respectful in the extreme, yet outdoes the original in almost every way, especially when turning Peter Murphy's arch delivery into Andy Sherburne's near-mumble. UD recorded this live and the sound is exactly like being in a dripping cave while langorous vampires entertain you. Chilling.

* "Ziggy Stardust," Bauhaus (David Bowie)
Bowie's song was from the Spiders From Mars period. Mick Ronson's guitar absolutely makes the song, a lament about the collapse of a man and a band. Bauhaus almost single-handedly founded the Goth image and style: mannered vocals, sterile production, cold feel. The Bauhaus version is a near copy, even to Peter Murphy's Bowie-worship vocals. But the song is recorded loud, really loud, which makes it fun to crank up.

* "Jump," Aztec Camera (Van Halen)
Everyone's familiar with Van Halen's pop masterpiece. But Aztec Camera, an English band, reinvented it with a light acoutic guitar sound, changing the title command from an imperative in the original to a wry, friendly suggestion in their version. Well worth seeking out. Again, more proof that great songs are great no matter what.

Wow, this was not only longer than I expected, but I'm sure I'm forgetting things here. I've thought about this off and on for a while, but never made notes, dammit. I'll come back to it later this week.

I also mean to do something about obscure songs and bands you really ought to seek out. Later, though.

An Interesting Choice

Sunday was Easter Sunday, yes? Memphis is a Bible-toting town, yes? Large numbers of Christians here, yes?

So why is it that the only front-page reference to Easter in the Commercial Appeal on Sunday was a corner-right, small story about an addict for whom Easter is special? No big headlines, nor photos, nor mentions, nor church stories, on the front page, the inside A2 page, the front page of the second A section, the Metro front page, or any of the specialty sections? Even in the Editorial section, the Sunday Discussion was about the Grizzlies, not any Easter-related topic. Neither of the in-house columnists mentioned it.

Only the story noted above and a picture of a couple of party girls with Easter bunny ears on the Central City Appeal section front page.

It's as though for the folks at the Commercial Appeal, today was nothing special. I'm certainly not suggesting a conspiracy here, but the astonishing lapse is telling. Of what, I'm not sure I want to know. Still, I was rather surprised to spot it, and I'm an atheist!

Someone To Watch Over Me

The City Council is considering traffic cameras as a way to slow down or stop folks who run red lights in Memphis. The article looks at how an experiment in Germantown is working out.

I'm not so sure about traffic cameras, but I am conflicted here. If the City could afford to place an officer at every dangerous intersection all day, to hand-write every ticket, no one would object and many would hail the move. But make that officer a machine and suddenly it's Big Brother. Flood Beale Street with officers and while some might call them party poopers, few would ultimately mind. But put a handful of officers in an office watching a bank of monitors hooked to cameras all over Beale Street, and suddenly it's a police state. It's only a tool, like handcuffs, tasers, clubs and guns. So, it's not the tool so much as it is the usage of it, I think. More properly, the potential for abuse and the likelihood of over-reliance to the point of laxity.

Still, the article makes some points worth taking a deeper look into:

In Germantown, the first city in Tennessee to experiment with the technology, red-light cameras have been used to ticket violators since September2002.

Andy Pouncey, an assistant city administrator in Germantown, said crashes at one intersection - Germantown Road and Wolf River Parkway - have decreased 26 percent since 2002.

At the other intersection - Poplar Avenue and West Street - the number of accidents has remained about the same, although traffic counts have increased.

Pouncey said the number of accidents also has declined at some of the town's other major intersections, which he considers a "residual" benefit of posting signs warning of video enforcement without telling drivers which intersections have the cameras.

Hmmm. Andy, maybe you should consider other things before you leap to conclusions here.

If you saw a drop in violations at every intersection, maybe you're seeing an overall reduction, a change in behavior, not associated with the cameras. Not terribly likely, true, but it must be considered and looked into. Alternatively, if putting up signs gets the same net result as putting up cameras, then logically it would be as effective and much less expensive for Germantown to use signs only. Or to rotate just a few cameras through different intersections anonymously and rely on signs elsewhere. Or put up fake cameras all over? Or some combination of these ideas?

Just a thought.

From October 2002 through September 2003 the cameras recorded 8,919 violations at those two intersections.

That total excludes emergency vehicles with lights flashing, cars in funeral processions and cars that legally entered the intersections before the lights changed red.

Germantown police wrote only 5,525 tickets based on evidence recorded on the cameras.

The error rate, or exclusion rate depending on how you want to look at it, is 38%? That's not good.

Germantown Police Officer David Bennett, who reviews the cameras and decides when to mail out citations, cited various reasons a violator might not be ticketed. For example, a driver's license plate might not be legible because of sunlight glare, a license plate frame or a trailer obstructing the camera's image.

Obviously, I would put a sheet of something glare-inducing over my license plate then. Saran wrap, thin plastic, clear spray paint. Saves me a ticket from the machine.

The car in the photo might not be the same type of vehicle shown on the license plate registration information.

Wouldn't that be a legal violation anyway? Wouldn't they investigate?

Germantown pays Nestor $15,946 monthly to maintain the cameras, which record only violations moving east and west on Poplar and north and south on Germantown Road.

Ticket revenue generated at the two intersections isn't enough to cover the monthly fees. Pouncey said the city's total deficit is $23,645 for the first 15 months the cameras have been in operation.

"That's the cost of doing the business of saving lives,'' Pouncey said. "If you're successful, you're losing (money). That's a fact. There's no way around that."

Jeezus, what half-baked thinking! Germantown could reduce their speed limits to 40mph all over town and save lives, too. Or station officers at every intersection all day long. Want to bet they'll consider that?

And let's look at the math. The per violation cost for the cameras works out to $1.79; the per ticket cost is a bit more at $2.89. The cost of the cameras for the 15 month period comes to $240,000. Germantown ended up paying $24,000 out of pocket -- the difference between ticket revenues generated and leasing costs. So, that means approximately $40 per ticket? Is that what the fine is in Germantown for the violation? Will the City there consider raising the fine to make it operate in the black? It's happening in other cities all around the nation, as they come to see these cameras as easy revenue generators.

Another way of looking at these cameras and their costs is to take the $240,000 cost and divide by the number of tickets. The total number of tickets issued a day is twenty; almost one an hour for both intersections. (Does that compute with your experience driving out there? It seems low to me, in terms of violators.) Is that even vaguely cost-effective?

[ACLU of Tennessee's] Weinberg said the time lag between when a violation is recorded and when a citation arrives in the mail is also problematic for those trying to defend themselves....

Tickets are mailed to the owners of vehicles recorded on camera, regardless of who might have been driving when the violations occurred, Weinberg noted.

No shit. In poorer Memphis that will be a real problem, where several people can share a car and friends frequently borrow. Imagine the difficulties of being working poor, being forced to take off from work for a court appearance and losing income, having to get documentation from friends or employers to prove you didn't drive the car sufficient to please a judge and then having to pull together the notarised paperwork to present at court.

Not to mention all the wasted court time and all the dumbass, lying jokers who will try to plead innocence without any supporting documentation, thinking they're on People's Court. It won't help our already choked court system, that's for sure. Will that extra expense and lost revenue from the judicial side of things be taken into account? I don't think the number of dismissed tickets was mentioned in the story and that should be a factor to consider.

So, needing more investigation, I'd say.

He Said It!

Referencing the Commercial Appeal story above, Blake Fontenay the writer says:

In an increasingly complex and dangerous world, Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery believes people are willing to trade some privacy to feel safer.

Further down, Lowery says the following:

"The average person is probably photographed no less than seven times a day, going to the gas station, the bank, major office complexes,'' Lowery said. "Most people realize cameras are part of everyday life."

OK, a) get this man out of government fast, before he gives away anything more of mine; and b) someone get this Benjamin Franklin quote to him right away:

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security,
deserve neither liberty or security.

Someone point out to Mr. Lowery that "the gas station, the bank, major office complexes," are private property, meaning that there is a process through which the government must go in order to view what I'm doing! Government-owned and -leased cameras are very different. I'm sure if I asked to have video cameras at every meeting Mr. Lowery attended at which it was possible City Council business was discussed, he would feel quite differently indeed.

Punk Rock

Another story on conservative punk rockers today. I wrote about this before, but this article manages to get a lot wrong, mostly in propagating liberal political values.

The story contains the writer's opinions and quotes someone:

Punk musicians on the left, however, argue that although punk rock has championed anarchy and scorned the establishment, its roots were always more radical left than conservative right.

"Punk rockers want change in society - that's what punk rock is all about. That's the exact opposite of conservative," said Mike Burkett, also known as vocalist Fat Mike for the band NOFX. "Conservative punk is really kind of an oxymoron."

Burkett is the founder of punkvoter.com, an unabashedly anti-Republican Web site composed of punk bands, record labels and fans that seeks to organize youth punk rockers. The site has a specific goal: to mobilize more than a half-million punks to kick Bush out of office in November, said Scott Goodstein, political director of Punkvoter.com.

"It's supposed to engage and enrage punk voters to take a stance," Goodstein said. "We're doing our part to make people understand that the Bush administration is out of touch with what's going on in our lives."

Sigh....

I'm old enough to remember when there wasn't even any punk rock. When the New York Dolls, with their heavy makeup, androgynous appearance and spandex flashy clothes were considered gay as all hell and regularly got beat up. Long before hair metal made it fashionable and popular.

I was in high school in the mid-Seventies and was deeply into music. At the time, that was mostly British rock and progressive rock (though not Yes, for some reason). I was also an Aerosmith and Kiss fan long before anyone I knew had even heard of them. One of my brothers and his friends used to come listen to what I was playing and joke, "We want to know what we'll be listening to in a couple of years." OK, they weren't joking.

I first heard about punk from a magazine called Trouser Press, a bible of independent and obscure British music. They were picking it up from early Patti Smith, Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, the Dead Boys, Pere Ubu and the Ramones. Many of you just read that list and had a "huh?" moment, didn't you? But that's how diverse the very earliest punk was -- small bands across the East Coast and Midwest rediscovering the joys of simple songs played with enthusiasm, if not competency. These were folks who placed a premium on just getting up there and playing, over the technical proficiency that was the standard of the day.

There had been scattered antecedents: Suicide, the New York Dolls, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the revival of Sixties garage rock. A generation was coming of age that was stifled by what had come before and the template that was laid over them. Radio of the day sucked pretty bad -- lots of California rock, "soft rock," singer-songwriters and pop. Disco was just bubbling up. (BTW, I actually did love a lot of disco. Get me started on the seminal influence of German technocracy and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," which is one of the most awesome songs ever. But that's another post.) There had long been a pendulum in radio that swung between pop and rock; it was ready to start another swing at this point. (This swing has gone on in rock and roll since the beginning. Today, we're in a pop phase and nearly ready to swing back to rock. We just came out of a rock phase -- grunge. There's also another, seperate pendulum related to the influence of black music with pop & rock, but that's another post.)

The big media completely ignored this bubbling up for the longest. I was a semi-regular reader of Rolling Stone and a rabid reader of Creem. The latter magazine was quicker to catch on, but they still lagged Trouser Press by a long shot.

Anyway, Britain's two major music mags, NME and Sounds were always on the lookout for the next big trend, in order to hype the bands and fill up pages, and attract readers. They heard about the Ramones in New York coming to Britain for a tour in late '75 or early '76 (can't remember exactly as I type this) and played up the "new punk rock sound" big. When audiences, mostly art-school college kids, went to see this band they were stunned to discover just how primitive, raw, unglamorous and basic they were. These goofs were big American stars, as their music mags said? Scores of kids across the nation said, "Oy! I can do that!" and did.

Within months, bands were popping up like weeds -- Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, the Clash, Wire, Joy Division, the Damned, the Jam, and a thousand more. It's one of the most amazing things since...well, since the British discovered American blues in the Sixties and sent us the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stone, et al. But where in America the growth of punk was organic, coming up spontaneously and individually in small pockets often unaware of each other (like the slightly-behind West Coast scene), in Britain the Ramones were the archetype that all started from. Short simple songs, boisterous enthusiasm over technical polish, and direct lyrics spoken in the everyman language. The scruffy apparel that seemed plucked randomly from all over the fashion landscape was a British innovation, where their art school roots made image a necessary component of the band. In America, there was little concern with clothing. Look at pictures from the early American era and you'll wince at how dorky most punks of the day looked, versus their flashy British cousins.

Within a year, Britain's music scene had been transformed.

Back in America, it was slower going. Major labels still were slow to pick things up, though I remember buying the first Cheap Trick and Ramones albums together in Spring 77. The magazines began to take their cues from Britain. What in America was a diverse and sprawling scene was called punk, but for most in the press the British version was the true punk. Back here, punk diverged into two strains: punk and New Wave. Punk kept the scruff and the attitude; New Wave was its more flashy cousin. Blondie and Talking Heads, though originally as punk as anyone, found themselves drifting into the New Wave category.

All long in America, punk was apolitical. It was far more about the generational shift, rejecting previous received values and finding your own. The world that punk came from was apocalyptic, consumerist, pre-determined; punk was a reaction against all that. There was a real sense then, nearly fogotten nowadays, that nuclear war was a very likely thing and we'd all die soon. So we might as well die laughing and dancing our asses off! The precise dynamic that launched rock and roll in the Fifties was at work in the birth of punk in the Seventies, and would come again in the Nineties with grunge.

Britain was a more complicated case. Class politics play a huge role there, and punk rock for them became much more rejectionist and "lower classes putting the finger up the upper classes." Thatcher was trying to privatise the socialist system and was bitterly hated, as the young felt they were having something taken from them. Race riots began to happen in mixed neighborhoods, which thoroughly frightened Mr. and Mrs. Average Briton (even though the non-white population of England was less than 5% at the time!). When the punk youth came along, looking like some nightmare vision and trashing the very social order that most Britons stood for, they provoked a far more hysterical reaction than American punks did. At least until the more violent and in-your-face California punk rockers came along in the early Eighties.

Remember, punk rock came about in the post-Nixon and Jimmy Carter years. Days of hippie protest were waning and such trappings of druggie loserdom came to be mocked by punks of the day. Same with the escapist disco culture. Reagan wasn't seen politically so much as socially -- the reassertion of old, rejected values meant to stifle the creativity and freedom of youth. It wasn't until the advent of the Dead Kennedys that punk became overtly political and the Left became welded with punk rock.

Look around in the catalogs of early American punk rock and you just don't see many political songs. There are some political critiques masked under metaphor, but nearly no direct statements. American punk rock was markedly politics-free, even to interviews. The second wave of American punk was pretty much the same: next-generation New York, Athens, the larger Midwest and Ohio scenes, the glorious explosion finally in California. Heck, the original article I mentioned above talks about the Ramones, but of the hundreds of songs they wrote, a mere handful concern politics at all.

Even British punk from the late Seventies was largely apolitical, mostly being anger at the Government, the stifling social order and the ruling classes. The Clash would be a major exception, of course, and not the only one. But even there, you'd find a lot more bands like Crass, who were flat-out Marxist anarachists, than you'd find regular pro-Liberal sympathies.

I can't speak to the punk rock of today, as I stopped listening to music that devotedly in the late Eighties. I can tell you about its roots, though, as I was there and paying attention. Record stores used to love to see me, as it wasn't at all odd for me to drop $40 to $100 on music every visit, especially on the more-expensive import stuff. Punk rock marked a decided turn in my musical taste, which perusing my record collection will clearly show. It still informs me today. I much prefer music like the Vines, White Stripes, YeahYeahYeahs, and those kinds of bands, even neo-revivalists like the Hives and Interpol, to post-grunge, numetal, rap-metal and what's called heavy metal today. (Though I do like some of it. Don't get me wrong.) Give me short, simple, fast, clever, and catchy as all hell, any day of the week. I like music that lifts me up and makes me want to bounce around.

Punk rock was the joy of playing, of just getting up there and banging out your songs. It morphed into New Wave, became successful and hit the mainstream alongside disco. Music became pop again, more a celebration of the artist and singer and song than the sheer exuberance that is rock. Formalist versus protean, if you will. Then grunge came along and it was punk for the next generation. Grunge was quickly absorbed by the mainstream this time, in marked difference with the reaction to punk. Now it's the era of boy bands and pop idols again.

Punk is the sense of reinvention and rediscovery, blowing off the rocco artifice that always accretes to get at the pure heart of music: joyful expression of the exuberant energy of youth. It's not the music industry category. It is just around the corner, always, waiting to be reborn.

Existential Mind Blower

When you the reader and I the author intersect here at this post, you have already read the things I have yet to write, and I have already written the things you have yet to read. So when I talk about something being "down below," it's an antecedent referral for me, a part of my past. For you, it's a hazy future which may not come about if you bail on this blog before you get there, one possible timeline so to speak among many.

For example, the next post I do will be about punk rock. I haven't even written it yet. You've already read it.

Wow, man. I'm freakin' out.

Sunday Headline Fun

I couldn't find a link online for this Sunday Commercial Appeal story, originally from the Toronto Globe and Mail, not even on the Toronto paper's site! Sheesh....

Anyway, the story talks about the recommendations made to improve the ailing Canadian public health system. The G&M says:

The committee's report made it clear the public health system that is supposed to ensure basic sanitation, disease and injury prevention, health promotion and disaster preparedness and response is not as effective as it should be.

The system has too little money, too few health professionals, a lack of laboratory capacity, inadequate disease surveillance, an over abundance of turf wars and an utter lack of coordination....

The committee called for $700 million a year in new money, the creation of a Canadian Public Health Agency at arm's length from government and for a chief public-health officer. Among the committee's 75 recommendations....

The federal budget bragged of $1 billion for public health. Yet funding for the public heath agency, $404 million, was reallocated from within Health Canada; there was money for a vaccine strategy, $300 million, but it's over three years; there was money for labs and surveillance, but it's only $165 million over two years; and there was only $100 million each for information systems and front-line personnel.

The Commercial Appeal headline?

Rx for Canada health care still looks solid.

As someone once said, OK, then.

Whew!

Big-ass posting yesterday, including an enormous post about Memphis, music, tourism and development. I had some trouble with Blogger last night in that it wouldn't post to the Web what I was sending in, but that seems to have cleared this morning.

A reminder that the Carol Chumney Wallop Page is up for your amusement. I have a couple more ideas, and certainly welcome your ideas and suggestions as well. Confidentiality guaranteed if you want.

The Kerry Mockery page has also been updated. New graphics, including a Norman Rockwell adaptation and a Republicard graphic I found on Len's site.

I would love to hear what people think about these graphics-- either pro or con. I enjoy doing them and you can expect to see more as both Carol keeps flailing around and the election season progresses.

More later!