The Everlasting Phelps

Here’s the deal.  Sheriff Arpaio is a piece of trash.  I want nothing more than for this criminal to be removed from office.

But he’s ours.  He’s an American, and he wears an American badge.  If you get him killed, you are starting a war.

Howard Kurtz:

Some of the most conservative and combative Republicans running for Congress are convinced that the media have it in for them.

But these candidates seem to regard it as an affront when reporters challenge them on their past statements and inconsistencies, which is a basic function of journalism. They are avoiding or limiting interviews with all but the friendliest faces as a way of circumventing the press. And some of them delight in skewering the mainstream media, a tactic that plays well with their base.

Aren’t the most liberal and combative Democrats doing the same thing?  When weren’t they limiting interviews with all but the friendliest of faces (meaning, anyone but Fox News)?

Takeaway from the story: state discovers that licensing has nothing to do with food safety, and that unlicensed plants are as safe as the licensed ones.

More waste that serves no purpose but to pay cops:

A majority of Dallas County commissioners said Tuesday that they favor eliminating constable traffic operations as part of massive budget cuts that are needed to close a $43 million shortfall.

The topic came up during a lengthy budget session – the first of many – during which numerous programs and positions were targeted for the ax. Everything is on the table, officials said, including a tax increase and employee pay cuts of up to 3 percent.

The constable traffic divisions don’t generate revenue for the county, and some have come under scrutiny in recent years because of controversies over towing and high-speed chases. Also, people have complained of speed traps, and some deputies have accused their bosses of instituting illegal ticket quotas.

You’ll never believe what is going on.  They are losing money writing tickets.  Why?  Because they can’t collect on them.  People just sit on the warrants.  Who is supposed to be serving the warrants?  The constables who are out writing more tickets.

Constable traffic operations have grown considerably in recent years, generating millions of dollars in ticket revenue for the county with the help of automated ticket-writing machines. But the county has struggled to collect the fines and is owed millions of dollars for citations.

Two constables have already said they will significantly scale down their traffic units to focus on their core mission of serving warrants and civil papers.

So why are they still out writing tickets?  Two reasons:  First, it is a “full employment” program for time-wasting constables.  The other?  Flat out theft and kickbacks:

The county’s investigation concluded earlier this year with a 91-page report that accused Cortes, among other things, of accepting bribes from a towing company that has an exclusive contract to impound vehicles stopped by his traffic deputies.

On top of that, there’s evidence that strongly suggests that the constables themselves are driving around these cars on dirty titles.

Every single person in the Dallas County Constables should be fired, all five Constables indicted and removed from office, and everything should be started from a clean slate.  The whole damned system is ruined.

Dallas police Lt. Scott Bratcher and Dallas County Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield asked lawmakers to allow law enforcement agencies to set up temporary roadblocks, called sobriety checkpoints, where police can look for drunken drivers.

“This is our No. 1 and only issue,” Mayfield said, referring to checkpoints.

In other words, the the only thing law enforcement wants is a system that lets them collect massive amounts of overtime for a ton of people to sit around in one place and delay and harass the general population, who did nothing more than decide to drive home.

Checkpoints are simply an end run around the 4th amendment.  They can’t legally pull someone over for no reason — so they want to legally be able to pull everyone over for no reason.  Why?  Because checkpoints take a huge number of officers, and a long time.  That’s a huge number of man hours, and almost all of those hours will be overtime.  That’s the point to checkpoints.  It’s riding the clock, and it’s costing you double — in the taxes wasted to pay for it, and in the lost time you pay sitting in a stupid checkpoint line.

Let’s muse about toll roads, shall we?

We have an unusual system here in Texas.  There aren’t a lot of toll roads, but there are some.  The ones that we have in North Texas as all administered by the NTTA, the North Texas Tollway Authority.  The NTTA is a non-profit corporation operating under the aegis of the Texas Department of Transportation.  NTTA has to raise its own money, run its own books, and operate on its own revenues.  I moved at the start of the year and began driving the Dallas North Tollway as my everyday commute, and I’ve noticed a few things.

The main thing is that almost as soon as I started driving it, the NTTA gained the power to set its own speed limits.  It did the utterly astonishing thing of following the state law.  They did a traffic survey, determined the “prevailing speed” on the road, and actually set the speed limits based on that.  The Dallas North Tollway went from 55 mph to 65 mph, and the George Bush Turnpike went from 55 mph (I think) to 75.

The results were, well, astounding.  Two things happened.  One, traffic improved.  The people who didn’t want to drive 65 actually moved to the right instead of poking along in the left lane fuming with indignation.  The second thing is that the speed traps disappeared.  What didn’t happen is that people didn’t go from driving 10 mph over (65) to 10 mph over (75.)  The vast majority of people now drive right at the speed limit, some 5 mph over in the left lane, some 5 mph under in the right lane.  The really amusing thing is that almost no one drives 75 on the George Bush, and almost everyone drives 70 or so.

The law says that this is how speed limits are supposed to be set in Texas.  This is virtually never how speed limits are set.  You know why?  It’s right up there.  Speed traps.  There’s no revenue profit in sitting a state trooper on the Tollway anymore.  They’ve all moved to the side streets.  You know, the ones where the speed limits are set by some other method than conducting a traffic survey (actually measuring the average speed) and setting it with the results.

The second thing that I’ve noticed is how little congestion there is on the Tollway now.  The NTTA has made significant changes to create this situation.  They took out the tollbooths — all the tolls are collected by mail, using electronic metering, reading RFID tags or license plates.  They promote the RFID method by making the toll cheaper if you have an account with them.  (BTW, if you are on paper dealer tags or out of state plates, tolls are now free.  Yay!)  More importantly, there are crews ready to provide roadside assistance if anyone breaks down.  They are there in minutes, get the vehicle off the road, and get the tire changed or provide some gas if the car can be put back on the road.

And what does that mean?  More people use the road because it is likely to not be backed up.  That means more tolls, which means more revenue.

The NTTA gets more revenue by making it faster and safer to use its roads.  The state gets more revenue by artificially lowering speed limits, writing tickets, and loses money by providing services.  Is is any surprise that the difference between the two is so stark?  But, you know, us libertarians are still insane for thinking that private roads would ever work.  That’s like thinking that you could build something like the internet by relying on private telecoms and peering agreements rather than complete government control over the wires.

Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her “to just suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.”

In other words, lie back and think of Gaia.

I really don’t have an opinion on the veracity of her accusation (don’t know enough about either party) but that part of her story is 1000% credible to me.