Fridays news today
It’s Monday, but I’m just noticing a story that ran in the Telegram on Friday. My own fault to be sure, I’m always playing catch up on local business news. I’m confused though, how this story didn’t get front page, above the fold placement? Check this headline:
Condos’ developer wants to liquidate
Foreclosure hits University Park
Many of us who spend too much time online have been watching this drama unfold via the University Park Lofts blog. It would stand to reason if the developer of a 37 unit condominium project, 25 of which were foreclosed on, files for Chapter 7 it would be more worthy of front page real estate than this follow up piece on arson in Northboro.
Who is the Telegram writing for again?
A blunderbuss for Breault and Babs
Recently I’ve been critical of the kid gloves writers the T&G have used to handle William Breault, Barbara Haller and the (nonexistent) Main South Alliance for Public Safety, hopefully todays commentary by Robert Nemeth is a sign those gloves are coming off.
The latest display of astonishing callousness in the face of a public health emergency came from City Councilor Barbara Haller and William Breault, a self-appointed community activist who uses demagoguery and intimidation to get his way. Under the pretext of protecting public safety, they have led opposition to measures designed to help people endangered by drug addiction, mental illness, homelessness and related problems, causing considerable harm over the years. But this time they went too far.
Excellent.
Traffic cameras are about money, not safety. Fact.
Today, Clive McFarlane jumped into the T&G private/public PR partnership with the city of Worcester and boy, does he sound silly. Here’s the thing, when the keystone to your premise is a quote from some guy which just happens to be a logical fallacy, the argument starts to look a little shaky.
As Blackstone Police Chief Ross A. Atstupenas said, “If people are abiding by the law, then you don’t have to worry about it.”
See Clive, the problem with that line of reasoning is People like Ross are in a position to constantly be changing the definition of what is and is not legal. Clearly Blackstone Police Chief Ross Atstupenas is not concerned with the rule of law, he himself has been found in violation of Massachusetts ethics code in his role as Chief. Is this really the guy we want deciding what we should and shouldn’t be worried about?
http://www.mass.gov/ethics/DA_Atstupenas.pdf
More to the point, the legal system in the US is not a series of either/or choices. This line of reasoning as presented by Ross assumes either you are guilty of something and therefore should be exposed or you are innocent and therefore have nothing to fear, simple logic demands we have at least a third component which is an expectation of privacy. This is when the Chiefs jump in and yell ‘but you’re in public and have no expectation of privacy’ and they’re mostly correct, however reasonable people agree that constant scrutiny is in fact an invasion of privacy. Would Chief Atstupenas or Worcester Police Chief Geme send one of their officers out to constantly follow a single resident, without cause, wait for that individual to do something illegal and haul them in? Would any of us put up with that sort of scrutiny? Would either Chief be comfortable with a resident following every action of one of their officers? How is this any different? The rule of law, in this country any way, demands all burden be placed on the accuser, not the accused. Any sort of constant surveillance without cause violates the spirit of our expectation of privacy, which is also the expectation to be free of constant scrutiny.
The simple fact is Law Enforcement is viewed by most municipalities as a viable source of revenue generation. There is no safety component to these minor motor vehicle violations. There is however a huge problem with the lack of engineering that goes into both the timing of lights and layouts of all Worcesters major intersections, but fixing that problem costs more and saves nothing. The sad thing is, even in the face of solid research showing traffic signals and signs cause more problems then they solve, Worcester is moving forward with this camera system on the false premise they make us safer. You’ve got nothing to hide, Worcester, so just OBEY. K?
unlawful free speech
Claire Schaeffer-Duffy of the Worcester Catholic Worker will not be spending any time behind bars for her role in Januarys anti-Guantanamo demonstration outside the Supreme Court.
That’s nice.
But I still can’t shake the charge against her from my head, “unlawful free speech“. I would really appreciate if any American citizen reading this would entertain a simple request by saying that out loud a few times, maybe try it in front of a small audience. Now try and imagine a judge saying it; how could we allow such an Orwellian phrase to find it’s way into a US courtroom?
link
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Since there’s no telling how long they’ll stay up, here are a few of the comments from that T&G story on the sentencing. T&G commenters never fail to prove themselves some of the most ignorant sub-cretins on earth. Stay classy Worcester!
Ms. Schaeffer-Duffy would rather have our families die from more 9/11’s than offend Muslim extremist. These people are the worst of the worst captured on foreign soil and detained on foreign soil. They do not enjoy the protection of our Constitution nor should they. If you believe they are, then you must insist we immediately declare war on China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
If we never lifted a finger in aggression again the only Americans still alive will be governed by Sharia law and living in fear soon after. Don’t forget who paid for your privilege to be a peace activist.
-Tim McKeon EB
I could protest too if I didn’t have to work for a living.
-CK
I have to wonder how scary one really thinks the U.S. Government is when one constantly goes out of their way to be placed in Government custody. I wonder if Scotty or Claire would so blithely arrange for themselves to be detained under the Taliban (or in Iran, Syria, etc). That would take guts. The play-acting that the S-D’s engage in is nothing more than a sad ego massage.
‘Oooh, ooh, I’m so important that I was arrested!!! Aren’t I a rebel??? Screw the man!!! Can you spare a few bucks?…’
-Tom
A slap on the wrist for these low lifes.They sympathize with terrorists who would cut our heads off at the drop of a hat.These traitors should have been given lengthy jail sentences as an example to others who would collaborate with the enemies of our country.
-slap on the wrist
…I’m sure they sleep better than the Clintonistas who watched our civilians being slaughtered by Muslim terrorists all around the globe and decided it would be a swell time for a ‘peace-dividend’.
They probably should have waited for the peace, don’t ya think?
-Tom
They should have locked her up and thrown the key away.
-YS
The Telegrams midlife career change
It’s kind of depressing when the newspaper business has come to the point where self-deprecation is perfectly acceptable, it’s no joke. Yesterdays Dianne Williamson column in the T&G tried to make light of the troubles the newspaper business is seeing.
Since the analysts predict that newspapers may soon be obsolete, it’s time to consider a new career. The only problem is, I have no skills that would qualify me for a real job.
It always strikes me as a little sad when I try to imagine what it must feel like to be stuck on a sinking ship. But the reality in this case is the ship didn’t get torpedoed the way many like to spin things, its sinking because the captain is asleep at the wheel.
What may be my biggest frustration where local business is concerned, is watching good business go bad and suffer simply because the owners didn’t want to learn new tricks. I’ve talked about this here before, in the form of the Tatnuck Bookseller. But a newspaper is something different, can anyone actually imagine a city the size of Worcester without a daily? Of course not and therein lies the rub. The T&G isn’t going anywhere, it’s just going to continue to get smaller both in scope and impact until it can be bought out by someone who cares less about local news than the Times, which is nearly impossible.
The unfortunate thing is it doesn’t have to be this way. Talk to anyone who’s over 35 in the newspaper business and you’ll get the same tired line about the internet being at fault for declining readerships, it’s code for ‘we’re old and the internet scares us’. All one has to do is take a quick glance at the T&G website and it becomes pretty clear they are willfully pissing potential revenue away. There’s no search engine optimization in play, the advertising is all local which means cheap and their headlines and ledes are written to hit with old ladies in Spencer instead of the news readers discovering and seeding stories via social bookmarking sites like digg, reddit and stumbleupon. And let us not forget the T&G employees who still publicly proclaim the internet to be some sort of fad. These problems can all be fixed, easily.
Last month the WSJ recorded 15 million unique page views, up 175 percent from the same period a year prior. This was probably both the biggest as well as worst reported story in this sector of the quarter, which shouldn’t be surprising, why would publishers want a reminder on how things should be done. Where’s the humor in that? It’s easier to just pretend that nobody reads the news anymore and spin it into a joke, right? If that’s the case then the jokes on us.
