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Saving on salt might be the better of the 2 evils. Madison WI is having a well water contamination issue due to road salt. https://madison.com/wsj/news/l...

As someone who pays state income and sales taxes, I assure you it is no theory.

As someone who also pays state income and sales taxes and municipal property taxes I assure you the theory barely holds up in actual practice.

For example, Wisconsin just gave Foxconn $4.5B in incentives to build a plant that will be largely lights-out - which means its almost fully automated with a minium support staff on hand just to keep the automation running. And on top of that, they gave foxconn special legal status that lets them unconstitutionally bypass most local courts.

If these 20 cities were smart, their mayors would ban together and make a "no incentives" pact. Let Amazon come to them, instead of selling out their citizens for 30 pieces of silver.

I have no idea what you are talking about. While I have problems with both the process used to draw districts and the courts which decide, my comment implied that your comment was completely incorrect.

First, you said "the district maps are drawn by bi-partisan groups". Wisconsin's 2011 redistricting was "created by Republican leaders virtually in secret", which is not bi-partisan.

Second, you said "tested in the courts to make sure they are fair". In a 2004 ruling, the Supreme Court "held that partisan gerrymanders were non-judiciable, and that courts could not intervene". Now, some courts are trying to fix that terrible ruling, and the Supreme Court is taking another look, but that is kinda the opposite of "making sure they are fair".

They closed the entire DMV for several years in order to prevent people from acquiring an ID?

No, they focused heavily on the offices that minorities could conveniently use, which was kinda revealing.

The freaking blog you pointed to is a lie,

Identify one falsehood in it. Go ahead.

there are a lot of other things going on into making those decisions, you can get an ID at the post office, from the DMV through the mail or online.

Yes, racists are practiced at finding excuses for their behavior, literacy tests and poll taxes were usually defended under those same terms. Including you know, misinforming the public about the situation.

But hey, if you want the state to mail out ID to everybody, go ahead and propose it.

You need an ID to buy booze, medicine and cigarettes, you're saying no black person buys booze, medicine or cigarettes?

Actually, I've found that sales clerks will rarely bother me about booze or cigarettes even if they are supposed to get ID, but I understand some people do have complaints about that process, medicine is somewhat different, but then, there are problems with pharmacists denying people's prescriptions. And don't even get my mother started on the way they hassled her about her diabetic testing strips refill, then tried to bill her after they FAILED to give her the number of strips she needed the first time when she asked for more. She gets quite irate at them.

If you close 31 DMV offices you do not "save only $100,000" ... argh, there is just so much wrong with this that it's not even worth pointing out. If it isn't obvious that this is partisan bullshit grasping at straws to make a point then you're dumber than you realize..

Sure man, you come right after an accusation that relied on false counter cries of racism and bigotry to ignore actual racism and bigotry, and you think it's other people who are full of partisan bullshit.

Sorry man, there's a reason it keeps being revealed.

And it gets worse as apparently it was Bentley's paramour behind it.

Crickets, eh? Interesting sound they make.

Scott Walker doesn't want pay teachers a living wage

The average teacher salary in Wisconsin is $53k. That is above the average salary/wage for Wisconsin, and certainly enough to live on.

Not only that, during all that bullshit it was revealed that some teachers were making $125,000/year with benefits. That's two and a half times that national average household income. Two teachers married to each other at that pay grade would be called "rich" by most Democrat voters if they had a job other than "teacher".

The main thing Walker and the legislature did was modify the law so that the state is no longer forced to collect union dues for the union, meaning union dues are now voluntary. Surely with the unions being so popular and great for the teachers they all still pay the dues - a large part of which is summarily transferred to the Democrat party - right?

Oh.

http://host.madison.com/wsj/ne...

The workers are doing just as well after this legislation as before it. The pushback came because the Democrats get a lot of money from unions, and without forced union membership most people don't want to join a union (surprise) and the Democrats get significantly less revenue. Oh well. Guess it's back to honest fundraising.

Be careful with those Nokia phones, especially the candy bar variant. Even when the phone is locked, you can dial 999, 911, 112, whatever. But that makes it trivial to pocket dial/butt dial emergency services. IIRC, there was a story about 10 years back about a pair of criminals that were caught because their phone dialled emergency services during a robbery. Can't find that one, so I'll leave this one about some would-be burglars in California instead.

Here we are - couple of guys knocked over a Target, but were completely betrayed by their phone.
One last interesting one: guy dialled emergency services while committing grand theft auto. Not once, but FOUR times on himself.

The DSM designation is "Antisocial personality disorder", and yes it is. It's just one with no known physiological cause.

There are known physiological causes http://host.madison.com/news/a-clue-to-why-some-adopted-children-can-be-anti/article_dfe8bbf7-cab7-59c9-ba99-243af7bc997a.html : low levels of the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin.

Neglect of young children was known to be able to cause the disorder and now they're beginning to get an idea of the physiological pathways.

The one where Ms. Benedikt said what school she was sending _her_ kid to?

Oh, yeah. I didn't. Just last year she sent her kid to private school.

The last two years have been the wettest on record here in Oz, this was preceded by our worst and longest drought. That's what climate scientists mean when they say extremes will be more common. James Hansen has a new paper in the Journal of Science (it's pay-walled) that estimates the recent level of extreme events we are seeing have only a 0.1% chance of happening in the absence of AGW, (N hemisphere only). He uses the concept of loaded dice to illustrate what this means, it's not a difficult concept to grasp and is backed up by solid evidence published in a highly regarded peer-review journal. Arguing about the 1930's dustbowl is irrelevant, it's not about comparing single events in a particular region, it's about the rate at which those (and more extreme) events can be expected to occur. One dustbowl per century is tragic but manageable, one per decade would be catastrophic.

Oh, I've been hearing people bitch about the state (as in the state of Wisconsin) and screaming that their local municipalities should have the power and people in Madison and Milwaukee shouldn't be telling people in the small towns and villages throughout the state how to live. Perfect example, the Gogebic Taconite mining bill that was shot down in the state senate.

The anti-government hysteria knows no bounds. I can only imagine how retarded it's going to get from here on out...

The entire process is rife with opportunity to rip off taxpayers. Here in Madison, WI, a locally based company, Spectrum Brands, hired a Florida firm to make overtures to the state government for tax breaks in consideration for "moving their business to Madison". Yes, a company that was already located here had a firm from another state negotiate for a 7-figure forgivable loan to move where they were already located.

Then, when the Madison public got wind of it, they moved to Middleton, anyway. With their loan, of course.

Gotta love corporate extortion and the transfer of public funds to private corporations. Oh yeah, plus the CEO of Spectrum Brands received a compensation package last year worth 13.7 million dollars. He couldn't take a little bit of a pay cut rather than bilking the government out of 4 million bucks? Heavens, no! That's just punishing success, right?!

And these are the "job creators" we're supposed to bend over for and throw money at for the privilege of working for them (which obviously generates them more revenue then it costs otherwise the job wouldn't exist in the first place)? America! Fuck Yeah!!

The entire process is rife with opportunity to rip off taxpayers. Here in Madison, WI, a locally based company, Spectrum Brands, hired a Florida firm to make overtures to the state government for tax breaks in consideration for "moving their business to Madison". Yes, a company that was already located here had a firm from another state negotiate for a 7-figure forgivable loan to move where they were already located.

Then, when the Madison public got wind of it, they moved to Middleton, anyway. With their loan, of course.

Gotta love corporate extortion and the transfer of public funds to private corporations. Oh yeah, plus the CEO of Spectrum Brands received a compensation package last year worth 13.7 million dollars. He couldn't take a little bit of a pay cut rather than bilking the government out of 4 million bucks? Heavens, no! That's just punishing success, right?!

And these are the "job creators" we're supposed to bend over for and throw money at for the privilege of working for them (which obviously generates them more revenue then it costs otherwise the job wouldn't exist in the first place)? America! Fuck Yeah!!

The entire process is rife with opportunity to rip off taxpayers. Here in Madison, WI, a locally based company, Spectrum Brands, hired a Florida firm to make overtures to the state government for tax breaks in consideration for "moving their business to Madison". Yes, a company that was already located here had a firm from another state negotiate for a 7-figure forgivable loan to move where they were already located.

Then, when the Madison public got wind of it, they moved to Middleton, anyway. With their loan, of course.

Gotta love corporate extortion and the transfer of public funds to private corporations. Oh yeah, plus the CEO of Spectrum Brands received a compensation package last year worth 13.7 million dollars. He couldn't take a little bit of a pay cut rather than bilking the government out of 4 million bucks? Heavens, no! That's just punishing success, right?!

And these are the "job creators" we're supposed to bend over for and throw money at for the privilege of working for them (which obviously generates them more revenue then it costs otherwise the job wouldn't exist in the first place)? America! Fuck Yeah!!

You can have a device broadcasting IP information all day long and a sworn statement that your property has been stolen, and it is at that location, and the police will act like the laziest most disinterested bastards on the fucking planet.

Just a couple weeks ago here in Madison, WI, a stolen iPhone resulted in multiple units across several districts tracking it down as the owner fed real-time location data to them.

YMMV, of course. I doubt the police in a city like Chicago or Milwaukee could give less of a fuck about a stolen phone or other device, what with all the murders and shit to deal with, and I'm okay with that. In the grand scheme of things, my laptop/phone isn't that important. File report, file insurance claim, get on with life...

In a twisted way I see how they could have an argument.

I disagree. I've seen some ridiculous communist/fascist loving stuff at University. I've seen people who "admire" Kim Jong-Il, and who "admire" Hitler, and who "admired" Mao.

These "leaders" killed millions of people in the name of truly evil ideologies, and they are typically tolerated at academic institutions.

For example, UW Madison had its local paper run an ad by a Holocaust denier, because, "“no opinions or assertions can be so offensive that we cannot bring ourselves to hear them.”'

Also, UW Madison has *at least* one professor (Erik Olin Wright) who studies the "scientific" ideas of Stalin. A mass murderer by *any* standard. Probably the most prolific mass murderer in history.

Scary to me that a Firefly poster would be considered the "worrying" document.

The reason it isn't getting much coverage in the major media is because it is a couple hundred dirty twenty-somethings (I'm barely not a dirty twenty-something, judgement not particularly intended) complaining that a bunch of rich people are rich.

Please don't be so sure. If you recall earlier this past year, there were massive protests in Wisconsin. As someone who personally took place in a lot of them, I know that our media is terrible. For example, during these protests, the rallies were larger than the biggest Tea Party rally ever, even though it was during a snowstorm in Wisconsin in February. That certainly strikes me as news, but when you turned on CNN, all you saw was a 10-second sound bite on Wisconsin, followed by a 3-minute long piece on the history of the Tea Party in US politics. (I don't have links handy.)

Personally, I don't know enough of the ground truth of what is happening on Wall St. to comment, but I very highly suspect that anything that has been said on any major network news is woefully inaccurate at best.

This case is only the tip of the iceberg. Since this whole budget mess started, there have been numerous legally dubious happenings. The Republicans have since backed down, but for a while, it seemed as if they were going to blatantly disregard a direct court order.

Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of understanding of the principle of checks and balances. The state Assembly Speaker even went so far as to accuse the judge issuing the order of not understanding the separation of powers of the government.

Possibly the best summary of the general level of civility of the debate can be summed up in a recent press release from the local Republicans, which is impolite, to put it mildly.

This case is only the tip of the iceberg. Since this whole budget mess started, there have been numerous legally dubious happenings. The Republicans have since backed down, but for a while, it seemed as if they were going to blatantly disregard a direct court order.

Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of understanding of the principle of checks and balances. The state Assembly Speaker even went so far as to accuse the judge issuing the order of not understanding the separation of powers of the government.

Possibly the best summary of the general level of civility of the debate can be summed up in a recent press release from the local Republicans, which is impolite, to put it mildly.

My local newspaper site, madison.com , is pretty new to comments. They disable them on crime stories I've noticed but anything doing with politics, the proposed high-speed rail service between Madison and Milwaukee, or state workers will attract trolls by the dozen. It makes reading the news stories like taking a walk through Craigslist's Rants and Raves section. When it turns to /b/ I'll just quit reading I suppose.

The concept of paying to comment seems a little too far though. That said, I'm all for having to publish your real name, address, phone number, and a JPEG when leaving a comment on a news site. Anonymity breeds stupidity and the best way to combat trolls is to force them to stand by their comments. Slashdot's system works, and I've seen other half-assed attempts to mimic it, but in the end people just need to be held responsible for their own actions.

In fact, I'll start. My name is Jay and yes, I've trolled before. I try very, very hard not to do it now and I've said things in online forums that'd I'd never say to someone's face. I'd promise not to do it again but the dumb republicans are still out there and need to be told what's what.

A peanut-sized piece of the meteor that streaked across Wisconsin skies Wednesday night has been discovered near Livingston in the southwest corner of the state, according to UW-Madison scientists.

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/environment/article_d1877c36-4997-11df-a968-001cc4c03286.html

According to this article appearing in The Capital Times of Madison Wisconsin:

...the federal government provided $657.1 million, or 28.8 percent, of UW-Madison's $2.28 billion budget for the 2007-08 school year.

...while the state provided $461.1 million, or 20.2 percent, of UW-Madison's budget...

So you omitted the federal funding and misstated the level of state funding. The actual level of state funding is about twice the figure you gave. The actual total level of government funding is 49% of the university budget, whereas you said 10%.

If the facts are not on your side then just make stuff up. The moderators will still rate that "Informative."

They are trying to put GPS on Madison police cars.
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/448418

Now, handing out fake tickets to those obviously illegally parked could net a useful income for a while.

Someone did that for a while in Madison, WI:

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/302436

His trial begins on the 19th.

I live in Madison and I didn't heard anything about this.

Here are some comments on the changes related to the MS/Novell deal:

http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/top/index.php?ntid= 126454

Another incident I remember is a student body president who raided the student association funds to create a life size copy of the head of the Statue of Liberty and the torch and park it out on the frozen lake one winter. Instead of getting kicked out for wasting funds, they were re-elected by a landslide and followed that trick by covering the commons with pink plastic flamingos. The details are hazy but that's mostly accurate.

The Recording Industry Association of America says it is targeting 68 people on University of Wisconsin System campuses for litigation over copyright infringements.

[snip]

Ahh, Madison.

The only place where someone can bomb a University building, killing a postdoc getting ready to go on vacation with his wife and three children, and then come back to the city to open a popular deli in the heart of the city, blocks away from his murder, and be welcomed back with good reviews and a healthy patronage. The Radical Rye, as it was called, was displaced by the $200M Overture Center for the Arts, but he still has a juice cart called Loose Juice that you can patronize. A this 4-out-of-5 reviewer notes, even though he "bombed the Physics building called Sterling Hall, killing a young graduate student who was unfortunately doing research in the building" it's apparently okay because it was to "protest against military research done at the school". Oh, the postdoc wasn't involved with military research? "Oops!" Hey, this guy even had a beer with him! As this reviewer notes, "you should go by and have a smoothie at Carl's stand." One of the other bombers, still at large, was a writer for the campus paper.

Come to think of it, there must be a die-in somewhere on campus I can go to today...all I need is a unicycle, maybe a pig's head to use as a mask, some fake blood, and some artful montages of Bush and Hitler intertwined.

FYI, the Stone Hearth isn't around anymore, but Cheap Trick, among others, played at the Nitty Gritty, too.

This article in the Capitol Times is also relevant:
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php? ntid=113651
- hyperbolix

The shortest ice season on Lake Mendota was the winter of 2001-02, when the ice lasted only 21 days. That contrasts with the long icy winters documented in more than 150 years of lake observation records. In 1880-81, for example, Lake Mendota was frozen for 161 days. hyperbolix

From the study you linked, the top 20% pull in 54% of the total income (last chart). They pay 65% of the tax burden (4th-to-last chart). Tell me again why this is so far off from "fair"? This was projected for 1999, but I looked at these numbers for 2004 or 2005 from the IRS to answer a similar selective stat posting like yours some time ago and came up with the same kind of numbers.

And when you look at wealth, like this post started with, it really gets quite "fair". The bottom 50% have about zero of that going toward any sort of long-term investment. Most of them don't even own property. Every single penny they get, they spend on living now. So, every single tax penny you can afford to give them a break on goes toward living expenses now. From an individual economic standpoint, it makes a huge difference in standard of living and quality of life (and we're talking about food on the table here, not an extra Lexus). From a whole-soceity economic standpoint those pennies flow right back into the system rather than being locked away in investments.

I don't buy the "but we supply the jobs" argument. In my state, 2/3 of the companies didn't pay a single penny of income tax. So, while the top few percent are whining about paying their fair share in personal income tax (as we see above, not much different than the rest of us), the businesses they own or run aren't ponying up.

Get over it cry babies.

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.ph p?ntid=72574&ntpid=1

The Salvation Army is an excellent charitable organization. I donate to them every year instead of the Red Cross, not because I don't like the Red Cross, but because I feel the Salvation Army is more efficient with how they spend the money.

We also donate to can drives, Toys for Tots (local charity), and the Humane Society. Food and clothing drives are the most important charities this time of year, since 100% of what you donate goes to people that really need those things. Donating to the Humane Society is just something we've always done, and as such is a family tradition. No reason it has to be done during the holidays, though.

Just for kicks, here's an annoying story about how a local school wasn't allowed to have their students volunteer for the Salvation Army, since it's a religious organization. The complaints of a few unreasonable people ruined what would have been a very good lesson for those kids.

Doug Moe: Onion bites back at White House
... some better ideas for spending ...
... going-away presents ... rudimentary judge school

Yeah, why go anywhere except the very best CS school? I mean, it's not like Wisconsin is a major research university or one of the world's leading universities.

And then there is the midwest that pays for the reconstruction but is anyone paying for Stoughton WI
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=tct:2 005:08:30:488032:METRO
Damn why do I have to live In a state that gets $.86 for ever dollar in federal taxes
http://www.nemw.org/fundsrank.htm
But we know the feds have the Midwest's interests in mind when Disney World has a no fly zone but Chicago doesn't.

What ever happened to Jon Katz?

He went to the dogs.

Also due for a big payoff are Yahoo and America Online Inc., which were early Google investors. Yahoo is selling 549,888 shares; AOL will unload 867,149, according to the filing. At $121.50 per share, Yahoo would collect $67 million, while AOL, part of Time Warner Inc., would reap $105 million.

You get what you vote for.

Stop blaming voters for their government's actions. The last two elections proved that you do not get what you vote for.

Classifieds are still up, so it seems like just the root index was hijacked.

Dont' visite with IE

www.madison.com

Of course, when they're giving the stats in relative percentages, the numbers don't tell the whole story. Yet people were quick to make a judgment call before working out all of the numbers.

With that said, I would have liked to see an even higher turnout. I've read that the national turnout was roughly 60% according to this article.

But part of that was because Wisconsin had high voter turnout (see here), which was 72% statewide and 80% in Dane County (where Madison is). I guess I should blame myself since the campaigns really focused on the swing states... I'm sure the youth turnout in the non-swing states wasn't nearly as high.

This article says the same thing as this post, except it noted towards the end that most of the youth voters are in or have attended college. The non-college youth are the people that I'd like to see vote.

Here you go:

Flyer distributed in African American neighborhoods in Milwaukee

Repubs challenge 37,180 registrations in Milwaukee (this is a new challenge, on top of the 5600 cases you cited)

Repub attempt to disenfranchise over 20,000 Ohioans thrown out of court (mentioned as similar strategy to Wisconsin item)

photo of fraudulent letter sent to Ohio democrats

West Virginia fraudulent phone calls

College republicans distribute false voting flyers at UW Madison

Voters get phone call claiming Kerry supports gay marriage (before you get on me about Schwarzkopf, that story's already been discredited. Apparently "someone" took a legitimate endorsement message from General McPeak, and spliced it to sound like Schwarzkopf made the endorsement)

Scan of flyer distributed in Jefferson Co., Alabama

Here's a bonus fraudulent letter sent to African American voters in South Carolina

God bless America, eh buddy?

This happens:

Judge rejects Motorola bid to keep radio jamming testimony secret
Cops: Radio jamming a menace

Frequency hopping radios are much harder to detect, nevermind jam. Trunking systems, spread spectrum radios, etc. The technology is there, but it's very expensive, so many (if not most) departments still use trunking systems and a narrow range of frequencies.

I don't think that taking down their radios is going to paralize them in small actions, but in large coordinated actions, such as stopping a hostage situation or a 9/11 incident it can paralize the forces. But even in the 9/11 situation so many frequencies were being used, and many of the radios were incompatible that this happened almost naturally, and it would have been hard to jam it any worse without a lot of jamming equipment. It brought home some good lessons about radio usage and system cooperation/consolidation.

-Adam

This happens:

Judge rejects Motorola bid to keep radio jamming testimony secret
Cops: Radio jamming a menace

Frequency hopping radios are much harder to detect, nevermind jam. Trunking systems, spread spectrum radios, etc. The technology is there, but it's very expensive, so many (if not most) departments still use trunking systems and a narrow range of frequencies.

I don't think that taking down their radios is going to paralize them in small actions, but in large coordinated actions, such as stopping a hostage situation or a 9/11 incident it can paralize the forces. But even in the 9/11 situation so many frequencies were being used, and many of the radios were incompatible that this happened almost naturally, and it would have been hard to jam it any worse without a lot of jamming equipment. It brought home some good lessons about radio usage and system cooperation/consolidation.

-Adam

• Amtrak Helps DEA Hunt Drug Couriers, Albuquerque Journal, April 11, 2001. (Ed.: link broken)
• Amtrak shares passenger info with DEA for drug prosecutions, Declan
  McCullagh's politechbot.com, April 11, 2001.
• Your Rights Online: Keeping DEA In The Loop About Amtrak Travelers, Slashdot, April 15, 2001.
• Amtrak 'Sharing' Information With D.E.A., New York Times, April 15, 2001 (registration required).

Sun Prairie: The Sun Prairie Water & Light utility is providing wireless Internet service and also has hooked up a few businesses directly to its high-speed fiber-optic system. Customers served total about 450.

Residential customers are charged $30 a month and there is a $50 installation fee.

http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/64033 .php

Haddad writes about Macs in K-12 education, but he seems to be a little too anxious to make his point.

Haddad said: "Hear what Art Rainwater, superintendent of the Madison (Wis) school district, told the local Capital Times. He conceded that Macs outperform PCs, but he didn't care. "We want a single platform," he said. "We're trying to get there using the carrot, or blackmail, or rewards, or whatever you call it."

Not quite. Here's what the Capital Times printed:

Superintendent Art Rainwater acknowledged that in some cases, Macintosh computers outperform their competitors.

Slight difference there?

Haddad continued his imaginitive use of quotes further on: "Drama teacher Rebecca Jallings at Madison West High School, for one, is fighting Rainwater's effort to strip her classroom of Macs. She told the Capital Times that she finds them the best machines by far for editing video, an important tool in her acting class."

Jallings may have told the Capital Times that, but it never published it, at least in the version that appears on the Capital Times web archives.

As an aside, Jallings records the students on video and then puts it on the Mac. The Capital Times reports "Rebecca Jallings, a theater teacher at Madison West High School, shoots video of her students as they learn to act. If they're "doing that swaying thing again" during their monologue, she said, she rolls the footage on her Macintosh computer and can prove it to the student immediately."

Quite how that's superior to using a video camera alone is beyond me.

Haddad writes about Macs in K-12 education, but he seems to be a little too anxious to make his point.

Haddad said: "Hear what Art Rainwater, superintendent of the Madison (Wis) school district, told the local Capital Times. He conceded that Macs outperform PCs, but he didn't care. "We want a single platform," he said. "We're trying to get there using the carrot, or blackmail, or rewards, or whatever you call it."

Not quite. Here's what the Capital Times printed:

Superintendent Art Rainwater acknowledged that in some cases, Macintosh computers outperform their competitors.

Slight difference there?

Haddad continued his imaginitive use of quotes further on: "Drama teacher Rebecca Jallings at Madison West High School, for one, is fighting Rainwater's effort to strip her classroom of Macs. She told the Capital Times that she finds them the best machines by far for editing video, an important tool in her acting class."

Jallings may have told the Capital Times that, but it never published it, at least in the version that appears on the Capital Times web archives.

As an aside, Jallings records the students on video and then puts it on the Mac. The Capital Times reports "Rebecca Jallings, a theater teacher at Madison West High School, shoots video of her students as they learn to act. If they're "doing that swaying thing again" during their monologue, she said, she rolls the footage on her Macintosh computer and can prove it to the student immediately."

Quite how that's superior to using a video camera alone is beyond me.

Your claims of traffic flow rates and red-light camera accidents--if true, I'll assume for now that they are--are at most flaws in a system we agree are necessary in our society. We should address these problems in the system instead of criticising the errors as inherent.

For clarity, are you arguing that because traffic flows faster than the posted limits, we should abolish speed limits entirely? Or instead, increase the limits themselves?

For further clarification, are you suggesting in your second example that Lockheed-Martin makes $30 per speeding violation per photo-device? I agree that figure appears exhorbitant. If true, it's not unlike the exclusive contracts that phone companies are signing with state and local jails. Companies unduly profiting from law is not okay, I agree. I won't agree that unenforcement of the law is acceptable because of a flawed implementation.

If a camera isn't calibrated properly (or fraudulently) one should have recourse or dropped charges. One can fight speeding tickets in the court of law. If one feels that the system is rigged against you, FIGHT IT! If your public servants are so currupt as to rig your speeding ticketing system to boost revenues, sue the system. Build a better mousetrap. Focus on the solutions.

Incidentially, three teens in my community died this summer when the drunk-driver of the car (travelling 80mph in a 35mph zone) ran a red light, slid under a semi-trailer, and ran into a Bank. I believe that if we had red light cameras in our town for the last five years or so, we may have prevented something like this from happening. Wouldn't people be more careful of getting caught?

I guess I care more that peoples lives are saved than worrying if people have to fight unfair speeding or "menial" traffic violations. "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!"